


Phoenix Rising

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brainwashing, F/M, Gladio/Ardyn is deeply unhealthy in this though, Iris is older when the relationship starts, M/M, Minor character death ala Kingsglaive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-06 12:05:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17344931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: When Iris Amicitia's brother is kidnapped by Niflheim, Iris is left behind to pick up the pieces. Determined to change what is expected of a Shield to the king, she dedicates herself to making sure that she'll never fail her loved ones again.But when she meets the chancellor of Niflheim and his strange, silent companion many years later, that promise will be put to the test.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This fic is already almost finished, so it'll be updating as I edit.)

Iris Amicitia was seven when her brother was taken.

Her dad had warned her about messing with the vent in her bedroom, but Iris hated the sound of air blasting in her room at night, and she liked to sleep with the vent covered and the window open. Besides, sometimes Gladio would go out on the balcony under her window, and Iris would climb down and they'd look through Gladio's telescope. She didn't care about the stars, really, but it was fun just to sit with Gladio and bicker over who got to look through the telescope, keeping their voices low so their dad couldn't hear.

So when the power lines in their neighborhood were cut and gas was pumped through the vents of the Amicitia manor, Iris was the only one awake enough to hear her brother scream.

Iris rolled out of bed, knocking several moogle plushes to the floor, as low, heavy thumps shook the wall. Someone shouted--A dull grunt more than anything--and Iris yelped at the sound of shattered glass. She scrambled to the window, her feet fumbling and slow, and gasped in a breath of cold night air just as a man in dark grey and brown lurched out of her brother's room, his face covered in a thick rubber mask. He held Gladio by the arms, dragging him through the broken glass that used to be his balcony door, and there was a trickle of blood running down Gladio's face, dripping into his eye and rolling along his chin. 

Iris screamed, and the man holding her brother cursed.

"The girl's awake!" 

Gladio stirred, grimacing in pain, and Iris grabbed her bedside lamp and smashed it against the windowsill. The man cursed again, and Iris, her head swimming, holding the shards of what had been a glowing unicorn lamp in her hand, swung a leg over the window.

"Fuck's sake, deal with her!" the man shouted. The floor trembled and shook, and Iris heaved the rest of her body onto the roof just as her bedroom door slammed open.

"Gladio!" she shouted. 

Gladio's eyes squinted open a fraction, and he shifted in his captor's hold. "...'ris?"

Iris started to slide down the roof, then jerked, nearly twisting off the side, as a hand grabbed her by the hair. She hung there, thrashing wildly, kicking at the shingles as she was slowly dragged back to the window.

"Iris!" Gladio's voice was slurred, but Iris could hear the fear there, and she struck out with her lamp. The person holding her let go, and she tumbled to the balcony just as the man holding her brother tried to heave him over the side. Gladio was weakly trying to hold him off, grasping for his mask, but the man just called down to someone below and kicked Gladio over the edge of the balcony. Iris lunged for him, and the man grabbed her around the middle, squeezing the breath out of her lungs.

"What should we do with her?" someone shouted.

"Let go of me!" Iris kicked out, but the man holding her might as well have been a solid wall. Her voice was a harsh gasp against the tight band of pressure around her chest. " _Gladio!_ Daddy! _Mom!_ They've got Gladio!"

"Leave her," said a voice over Iris' head. "She's just a girl."

Then there was pain, bright and sharp as a light going out, and Iris fell into the dark.

 

They had to close the doors to the Citadel ten minutes before the funeral. There were already too many people for security to handle, and the crowd outside was so thick that Iris couldn't see the street for almost a mile. Inside, flowers hung from pillars and were woven in seat backs, and crushed petals stuck to the floor as visitors tramped in from the outside, all of them silent and somber and far too polite. Iris wished someone would say something. She wished people would whisper or cry, like they did outside, but the most she heard were a few muffled sobs, discreetly pressed to handkerchiefs and gloved hands. Iris stood next to her father, wearing a new black dress she hated, staring numbly at the two coffins on the dais.

 _He wasn't dead when they took him,_ Iris had said, when she'd heard that her brother's tombstone would be placed next to her mother's. _He said my name._

Her dad had tried to explain, but Iris didn't listen. Not really. She just thought of Gladio's face covered in blood, of the hand in her hair, of a voice saying, in that low, dismissive tone, _She's just a girl._ Now, Iris swallowed a knot in her throat and tried not to think about how one of the coffins before her lay empty.

The gas had nearly killed her father. It was too much at once, the doctors said--Whoever took Gladio could have used a quarter of the amount just to knock them out. Instead, Iris' mother was found dead in her nightgown, a hand on her husband's chest, and Iris had to wait outside her father's hospital room for days, quiet and miserable.

Next to Iris, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prince of Lucis and Gladio's closest friend, wordlessly took her hand.

"He isn't dead," Iris whispered, as the king stepped between the coffins, his face shadowed. Noctis squeezed her fingers.

"I know."

 

\---

 

"Iris!"

Iris rolled to a stop, holding onto her best friend Artemis' shoulder for balance as her father climbed out of a large black Crownsguard car. His face was tight with concern, and his official robes were unbuttoned to the collar, sliding on his shoulders as he walked. Iris' toes curled in her borrowed roller skates, and she looked down at them, biting her cheek.

"Hello, Mr. Amicitia," Artemis said in a small voice. Iris squeaked as her father pulled her into a crushing embrace, and Artemis shuffled uneasily, looking away. Clarus Amicitia was more of a hero than a man to most people, and Iris figured it was probably awkward to see him with his hands shaking and his shoulders hunched, holding his daughter like she was going to be torn out of his arms.

"What did I tell you?" Clarus said. " _Never_ go _anywhere_ without a guard. You know this, Iris."

"We just wanted to skate, Daddy," Iris said.

"Skate with _supervision,_ " her father said. "You're on restriction, young lady. In the car."

Artemis sat next to Iris as Iris yanked off the roller skates, twisting her long black hair in her fingers.

"He just doesn't want to lose you," Artemis whispered.

"I know," Iris said. "I'll text you when I get my phone back."

"I'll bring you my Penny CD when you do," Artemis said, and Iris hugged her, scrunching her eyes shut against the memory of broken glass, of blood, of a body covered in a thick blue tarp.

When she got in the car, it was like stepping into the heart of a storm. She sat quietly next to her father, hands in her lap, and stared out the tinted window at the small form of Artemis disappearing in the distance.

"Iris," her father said.

"It's okay," Iris whispered. She bit back tears, clenching her fists on her knees. "I'll remember next time."

 

 

"Yikes," Noct said. 

"How bad is it?" Iris covered her eyes as Prince Noctis flapped open the newspaper, holding it to the light. They were sitting in the booth of a cafe with Ignis, several drained hot chocolate cups, and an entire squad of Crownsguard trying to look subtle in their civilian gear. Noct skimmed the paper and sighed.

"They quoted him word-perfect," Noct said, and Iris slumped on the table, laying her head in her folded arms. "'I will not bury my daughter,' Shield breaks silence, crown in jeopardy, is this the end of the Amicitia line, blah, blah--"

"Don't just _guess!_ " Iris cried, and snatched the paper out of Noct's hands. She looked it over. The picture was a good one--It showed her dad chewing out some well-meaning council member, hand upraised, face dark with fury. 

The night had been a disaster. Iris knew her dad had been avoiding the subject of her training to be Shield--Every time she asked when she'd get started, he went quiet, stalking off to his side of their new apartments at the Citadel to sit in the dark. It had gotten to the point where Iris stopped asking, hoping that eventually, when the memory of her mother and Gladio didn't fill the apartment like ghosts, he's finally agree. 

"Well," Ignis said. He scratched at a pimple--At sixteen, he was a disaster of acne and spots--and tucked his hand away when he caught Iris watching. "It isn't as though you _wanted_ to be a Shield in the first place."

Iris set the paper down, and Noct looked sharply from her to Ignis. "But I do," she said. "I thought... I mean. At least until Gladio gets back."

There was another uncomfortable silence. Iris rustled the paper again just for something to do, and Noct lowered his voice, ducking down to look at her.

"Iris," he said. "You _are_ pretty young."

"I'm nine," Iris said. "Gladio got started at eight, and he, you know, he was..."

He wasn't enough. No amount of training in swords and shields and defensive maneuvers was enough when the enemy came in the night, with subterfuge and numbers and enough gas to kill his family in their sleep. Iris took a shaky breath, and Noct, at a loss for words, motioned for another round of drinks.

That afternoon, Iris walked down the long, winding stairway to the Crownsguard offices where her dad worked when he wasn't guarding the king. The soldier guarding her frowned when she didn't stop at Clarus' office, but kept going, all the way to the door marked Spec. Ops. 202A-E. She knocked on the door, and found herself face to face with Dustin, a tall, gangly man with receding hair and a nervous smile.

"Oh," he said. "Iris."

"Hey, Dustin," Iris said. "Is Monica in?"

"Yes, of course." Dustin stepped aside, and Iris glanced back at her guard. 

"I'll be safe in here," she said, and shut the door. Dustin gave her another curious look, but Iris just made a beeline for Monica's office.

No one who looked at Monica would assume that she was, in some circles, considered the best soldier in the Lucian army. Oh, Cor Leonis was flashy. He fought all the big, impossible battles and came back standing, covered in medals and scowling deeper every time Clarus summoned him for a new one. But Monica had been to at least as many battles and skirmishes as he had--She just didn't make as big of an impression. That was the point, really. Monica got the job done quickly, quietly, and _fast._ She'd even beat Clarus at hand-to-hand fighting, and she could disappear in the middle of the battlefield only to show up with half the enemies wiped out, the officers captured, and most of their secrets in hand.

Monica looked up from her laptop when Iris entered her office. The office itself was covered in paintings of landscapes from Accordo and pictures of cats, and there was a stack of young adult novels next to the computer that looked worn and well-loved. The chair even had a knitted cover over it, and there was a "You're Meow-velous!" sticker on her purse.

"Iris," Monica said. "This is a surprise."

"I need a favor," Iris said. She sat down on the other side of Monica's desk, twisting her hands together. Monica raised her brows and slowly closed her laptop. "It's important."

"I can tell," Monica said. 

Iris took a deep breath.

"I'm gonna be Prince Noctis' Shield," she said, and Monica's smile froze. "And I want you to teach me how."

To Monica's eternal credit, she _didn't_ laugh Iris out of her office. She just sat there, hands folded on her laptop, looking down at Iris as though she'd just shed her skin and sprouted feathers.

"You know I don't shield people," Monica said at last, when Iris started to fidget in her chair.

"Yeah, I know," Iris said. "That's the point. Dad's always been so... Big, I guess. Shields are supposed to be. We take damage so the king doesn't have to. Which is fine," she added, "but maybe it doesn't work that way anymore. Niflheim has snipers now, and people who, who use poison and magitech and--"

"Gas," Monica said. Iris felt heat rise up her neck, and she looked away. "So you're saying that you want to be a Shield who anticipates, rather than one who reacts. You'd like to neutralize threats before they happen."

Iris nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"You'll need your father's consent to take the trial to become a Shield," Monica said.

"I know." Iris leaned forward. "But I'll do it anyways. Even if I can't take the trial. I'll be a Shield whether I get the tattoo and the weapon or not."

Monica leaned back in her chair. Behind her, a clock shaped like a lucky cat wagged its tail back and forth, clicking softly, and Monica drummed her blunt nails on her laptop in time.

"Run," she said. Iris sat up, alarmed, and Monica stopped drumming her fingers. "Run everywhere. Up and down stairs--the Citadel has lots of those--up hills, _down_ hills. Run in the halls until someone stops you. And learn how to dance."

"What?"

"It helps," Monica said. "You need control to dance, and it teaches you how to adapt and keep your footing. Maybe take some gymnastics, too... You're what? Nine, now?" Iris nodded. "Yeah, that'll work. Get started there. And if you want to learn the rest of it..." She drummed her fingers again, over and over, a quick staccato. "Get me Cor Leonis' cellphone."

"What? How?" Monica stood, and Iris stood with her, following her to the door.

"Find out," Monica said. "Bring it to me, and I'll take care of everything else. Do we have a deal?" 

Iris opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. It wasn't any use trying to argue with Monica--She had a glint in her eye that reminded Iris of her mother when she and Gladio were fighting. And anyone else would have reported her right to Clarus.

"Deal," Iris said.

"Good," Monica opened the door. Her voice turned cheery and light, and she waved Iris off with a smile. "Nice seeing you again, Iris!"

Iris found her father upstairs, speaking to the king by the library. He started when he saw her, and his face shifted into such a deep, earnest look of relief that Iris wanted to scream. She hadn't thought of lying to him when she'd worked this plan out in her head, but now she found herself struggling to find the words.

"Your majesty," she said, bowing to King Regis. "Dad. I want to take dancing lessons." Her father's brow creased, and she barreled through it, shoving her hands in her pockets. "I have time. I always get done with homework early, and I can't hang out with Artemis as much as I want to, but I remember seeing all these pictures of Mo--of people's coming out balls, and I thought, oh my gods, what if I have one and I can't _dance_ and I never get a date and I stay single for the rest of my life and I die alone with a million cats?"

"Sorry?" her father said. Regis smiled.

"So I mean, if I don't learn how to dance, my life is pretty much over," Iris said.

"Oh, my," Regis murmured. "We can't have that, can we, Clarus?"

"Wait a moment," her father said, a conductor on a train already veering off the rails. "A coming _out_ ball? _Dating?_ "

"Ignis and Noctis are taking lessons every three days in the ballroom," Regis said. "I'm sure the instructor won't mind one more pupil."

Clarus gave Regis the look of a man on the edge, then sighed. "Fine. Dancing lessons, yes. Coming out balls, _no._ "

"Thanks, Daddy!" Iris hopped up on her toes, and Clarus bent almost double so she could kiss his cheek. "Thank you, your majesty! I'll go tell Noct!"

"My gods," her father said, as Iris ran off down the hall, her harried guard trotting after her. "She wants a coming out ball. At _nine._ "

"The world moves on, old friend," Regis said, and Iris only just stopped herself from letting out a victorious whoop in the middle of the hallway.


	2. Chapter 2

_An eye opened in the darkness, bright and unlidded and terrible, and the boy who lived there ran bloody fingers over the marks he'd made in the stone. Names they'd taken from him. Important names. Names that belonged to someone who walked in the sun, once, who didn't ache with hunger, who didn't flinch every time the man in the black hood snapped his fingers and the world went sideways. He pressed his palm to the marks and mouthed the words to himself as a shadow crossed the doorway._

_Clarus. Dahlia. Iris. Noctis. Ignis. Cor. Jared. Talcott._

_Clarus. Dahlia. Iris._

_Footsteps clicked along the damp cell floor._

_Noctis._

_"There you are." This was a new voice. A low voice, fond and a little worried, and the boy pushed himself against the wall as though imprinting the words into his bare skin._

_Ignis. Cor._

_"Come, now, Theseus," the voice said._

_Jared._

_"Don't you want to come out of the dark? It's taken me such a long time to find you."_

_Talcott._

_A hand lay on his hair._

_Clarus._

_"Theseus," the voice said, and a shadow shifted before him, taking shape as a man with a mess of red hair and a slight frown, crouching in the muck of the boy's cell. "Don't tell me you don't remember."_

_Dahlia._

_"That's alright," the man said, and the boy shuddered, shying away from his touch._

_Iris._

_"I'm sure I can jog your memory."_

_Noc_

 

"Noctis!" 

Iris stamped hard on Noct's foot. It was like watching a marionette rise from the dead. One second, Noct was shuffling along, barely matching Iris' steps to the same dumb song they'd been dancing to all afternoon, and the next, he was a polished, unerringly proper prince, whirling Iris away along the path marked down on the ballroom floor.

"Thank you, Lady Iris," the instructor said, and Iris gave the man a thumbs up over Noct's shoulder.

"Sorry," Noct said, as he and Iris switched places, Iris leading him down the ballroom the other way. He wasn't nearly as smooth dancing backwards, but his posture was perfect. "I've been kind of out of it lately."

"Can't imagine why," Ignis said, dancing by with his invisible partner. He winked at Iris and pressed a finger to his mouth.

"Young Lord Scientia!" the instructor called. "Do _not_ let go of your dance partner!"

"Of course, Master Fen, my deepest regrets, Master Fen," Ignis said. Noct rolled his eyes, and Iris grinned. The instructor had it out for Ignis, who was undergoing yet another awkward growth spurt and kept showing up with new shoes.

And of course, there was the fact that every time Iris was late, it was Noct and Ignis who took the blame. The truth was that they were busy standing on one end of the service stairs and the other, four flights apart, shouting at Iris as she raced up and down between them, passing messages.

"Tell Noctis that I'll never speak to him again," Ignis had said just that morning, and when Iris made it down to the fourth floor where Noct was waiting, Noct had sent her back up with the message that Noct was just _borrowing_ Ignis' leather jacket and was definitely planning on giving it back.

"He's lying," Iris had told Ignis. "I saw him spill mustard on it last Friday."

"Treachery!" Ignis cried, and Noct cackled and went running off down the stairs. "Come, Iris. We have a fugitive to catch."

Sometimes, Noct would take Iris out with their bored, bleary-eyed guards to go running with Prompto, Noct's friend from school. Prompto taught Iris how to stretch and cool down properly, and Artemis, who was in on the plan from day two, would show up on her skates for a race before school.

Still, Iris hadn't gotten anywhere close to Cor's cellphone. She'd practiced picking pockets by hanging bells from the ceiling and trying to sneak them off, one by one, without making them ring. She even lifted her dad's wallet once, but hastily put it on the counter and almost ruined it by apologizing.

 _Monica's waiting,_ she thought, as Clarus dropped her off at the gym for her first gymnastics class. She had to do it soon. Before Cor or Monica went on assignment again, probably. 

Her chance came when Cor visited the apartment for dinner. Jared and Talcott were off with their family, so Cor got to sit at the too-small table and talk Clarus' ear off about their plans for training a new Shield.

"There's a young man in the Kingsglaive that Drautos is putting forward," Cor said, as Iris, barely holding down terror, inched out of her chair. "He says he needs to be taken out of the field."

"That sounds ominous," Clarus said. 

"Uncle Cor," Iris said. Cor didn't even jump to find her so close, but Iris bumped into him anyways, jostling his arm. "Tell Dad he needs to throw me a coming out ball when I'm fifteen."

"No," Clarus said, and when Cor laughed, leaning in to grin at Clarus, Iris grabbed his phone and slipped it in her jacket pocket.

She spent the rest of the evening in her room, staring at Cor's phone and waiting for her dad to open the door. It never happened. Cor went home, her dad had a glass of wine and put on some music, and after a while, Iris heard him staggering back to bed.

The next morning, Iris went straight to Monica. She slammed the phone down on Monica's desk, and Monica picked it up, thumbing through the lock screen.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "It's Cor's alright. Damn fool uses the same code for everything." She crossed her arms, looking down at Iris. "So," she said. "I want to warn you, I've never done this before."

"Neither have I," Iris said, a little helplessly. Monica graced her with another of her small smiles.

"We'll pick it up as we go, I suppose," she said. "Tomorrow, I want you to steal something from the king's office. It can be anything, it just has to come from there. And we'll start meeting in the training hall every day between dance lessons, same time. You're going to learn hand-to-hand fighting."

"Um." Iris tried to think around the soft, insistent screaming ringing in her mind at the thought of sneaking into King Regis' office. "Dad's not gonna like it."

"Don't worry about your dad," Monica said, and flipped Cor's phone in the air, watching it spin, before slipping it into her own back pocket. "I'll set him straight."

 

\---

 

"You're so grim today," said the king, standing in the dining room of his wide, open air apartment. The king hated the indoors, so his apartment had only a few walls, most of them made of thick frosted glass for privacy, and climate-controlled heaters that kept the roof in a pocket of warmth year round, staving off the eternal gloom of Niflheim. He pushed a glass of water across the table, and the young man known as Theseus took it in sword-calloused hands.

"Feel like I'm forgetting something," he said. The king--Ardyn, he said Theseus could call him Ardyn now--smiled in sympathy and propped his feet on a chair. 

"That would be my fault," Ardyn said. "I almost didn't find you in time. You've lost so much, Theo." He leaned in and lay a hand on Theseus' cheek, and Theseus' chest constricted painfully. He'd been in the dark for so long, he'd nearly forgotten his king. It had taken him a year to get to where he was now, and still, sometimes the memory of Ardyn leading him into the light was subsumed by something else, something that made his head throb and his breath hitch, something lost.

"I think it's happening again," he said. There were tears on the king's fingers, and Gladio's hands were tight on the--on the cup--

"Please," he said. His voice cracked. "I can't--"

"Shh," Ardyn said. "Don't fret. Look at me, Theo. Look at me."

He raised a hand to Gladio's--to Theo's eyes, snapped three times, and the pain of the world at large faded away, sinking into a familiar fog that pulled at the panic in his mind until there was nothing left to hurt, to feel, to remember, nothing at all.

 

\---

 

Iris left the bathroom on her tenth birthday to find the kitchen table stacked with gifts, bright and cheerful and fixed with bows that glittered with sequins. She stood there a minute, barefoot in her bunny-print pajamas, and jumped when Jared wrapped an arm around her shoulder. 

"There, now," he said. From the kitchen counter, where he sat with a plate of eggs and toast, Jared's grandson looked up in surprise. "Birthdays are hard, aren't they?"

Iris choked down a gasp of air. "I'm sorry," she said. Jared turned her around, and she buried her face in his sensible black jacket. 

"I miss them, too," Jared said.

"I keep..." Iris' throat went tight. "I keep thinking..."

That they'd _be_ there. That she'd come out and find Gladio waiting for her with that ridiculous grin, having cancelled half his morning schedule just for Iris, and their mother next to him, waiting for Iris to get up before she went to work. She could almost see them, even if this wasn't the same kitchen anymore, even though Iris had changed so much herself, was so much stronger and faster and warier than before. She could almost...

"I can call Lord Amicitia," Jared suggested, and Iris drew back, gasping wetly. 

"No, I'm fine," she said, and Jared gave her a stern look. "I promise." When she turned back to the table, Talcott was there, holding out his arms for a hug.

"I don't deserve you guys," Iris said, and picked Talcott up. "Come on, Talcott. Let's open these presents."

Fighting practice with Monica was cancelled for her birthday, but Iris did get a new book on tactics from her in the bottom of the pile, along with the latest Chocobo Club chapter book. Clarus had agreed to what Monica called self defense training without protest, but Iris suspected he was privately glad Iris had a woman around to look up to. She caught him telling Jared more than once that he didn't want Iris to grow up surrounded by men, which probably explained why the movie he got her that year was a historical epic about the Rogue Queen.

A few months later, Noct surprised Iris with a punching bag he'd installed in the unused ladies dressing room next to the ballroom. Iris took on extra lessons at the gym, and signed up for swing class with Ignis, who could toss her in the air _and_ catch her nine times out of ten. Monica taught her how to break locks and tap phones, and Artemis bought a new bike with her allowance so she could race Iris around the Citadel parking lot. 

By Iris' eleventh birthday, Noct had rejected three potential Shields, Iris moved up to the senior level of her gymnastics class, and her father surprised her with tickets to a ballet based on her favorite anime. The costumes were terrible, and the dancing was worse, but it was nice just to sit in the theater with her dad, whispering jokes about the wigs and sharing chocolate-covered popcorn.

Later, as their car passed the empty windows of the Amicitia manor, her dad took her by the shoulders.

"I know you miss it," he said. 

"I miss them more."

Clarus kissed her on the temple, and Iris leaned against him, listening to the steady thrum of his heart.

"Why did you let Gladio train to be a Shield?" Iris asked. Her father's arm around her stiffened. "You won't let me."

"Iris." Clarus sighed. "You already know the answer."

"But you don't let _me_ have a say in whether _you_ should be a Shield," Iris said. "Mom died. Gladio's... Gone."

"Iris, there's been no sign--"

"He's gone," Iris said, "and you're the only family I have. So if you can stop _me_ from protecting Noct, I can--"

"I'll retire," Clarus said. Iris felt a chill run through her, settling at the base of her spine. "If that's what you want. Cor can take over my duties well enough."

Iris blinked hard, trying to steady her own breathing. "I don't want that." It felt like treason, listening to her father talk about passing on his role so easily. It wasn't _right._ Gladio had been taken just for being a Shield, it would be _wrong_ to just throw that away, to quit seeing Monica after class, to see Noct as just a prince, without that tie that bound Amicitias and Caelums together. 

"You always think you'll be strong enough to see it through," Clarus said. He looked past her, through the dark window, through the Wall, through the world itself. "My father died when I was seven. My mother was killed on the field a few years later. The Amicitia crypt is larger than the Caelums'--I used to go there, sometimes, when I was young. My father's sister died two years before he became Shield, my grandmother... Well. I always knew I would die young. I knew my children would die young. When your brother was born, my uncle warned me to leave the raising of Gladio to Jared and Dahlia. It would be easier that way."

Iris barely dared to breathe, held under her father's arm.

"When Dahlia and Gladio died..." 

"You don't have to," Iris said, a desperate whine in her voice. "Dad--"

"Death is easier to stomach when it's your own." Clarus looked down at her, and his eyes were overbright, his face twisted in a grief Iris had only felt, those nights when the silence of the apartment grew too long and she curled up in bed, watching the vent on the wall. "Iris. Let me have this. I want to see you grow up, go to college, find something you love--something that doesn't end in the crypts with a plaque to remember you by. I want to see you dance at your wedding. I want your grandchildren to know who you are."

"But Noct," Iris said. "He isn't just a king, Dad. He needs an Amicitia."

"And he'll be well protected," Clarus said. "As will you. I've already spoken to Regis. When you're of age--"

"Dad." Iris felt like she was falling off the roof again, a hand in her hair, Gladio blearily staring up at her from the balcony. "No."

"He'll only be twenty-three."

"Dad!"

"We have years to think it over, in any case," Clarus said. "But I would have thought you'd be pleased. You and Noct are friends, after all. And no one can pressure you to be his Shield then. You'll be safe."

"Safe," Iris whispered. She sat back, hands over her face, all her plans collapsing around her as the car slowly trundled towards the Citadel, awash in the lights of the upper city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ("Of age" here means 18.)


	3. Chapter 3

"I can't believe he's doing this."

Iris sat on the top steps of the service stairwell, head in her hands, staring down at her sneakers in the vain hope that the ground might open up and swallow her whole. Noct sat a few feet away, somehow managing to look awkward and ungainly in a bespoke suit and an army's worth of hair gel, scratching the back of his neck.

"It's not set in stone," he said. 

"Dad thinks so." Iris leaned against the wall. "Can they do this? I mean, I'm still a kid."

"Yeah, but you're pretty much royalty, right?" Prompto said. He was lounging on the railing a few steps down, loudly eating a protein bar. "Isn't that how you guys do it?"

"Sometimes," Noct said. "Mom and Dad married for love, though."

"Which is what I want to do," Iris said. The others looked at her, and she blushed. "Eventually. I'm _eleven._ "

And it wasn't like Noct even thought of her that way in the first place. Iris had to admit, deep down, that she'd entertained the idea... Okay, several ideas. Most of them involved her in a leather and gold-plated warrior dress, holding Noct around the waist while she fought off a daemon with one arm, all while Noct looked at her with that slight, bewildered smile that made Iris want to hide behind her hands.

What she _didn't_ want was for him to be dragged kicking and screaming up the aisle. What she didn't want was to be forced to be... To be _queen,_ when she was supposed to be a Shield. If Noct was going to marry her, she wanted the news to come from Noct himself, maybe in the middle of a field of flowers, or on the roof of the Citadel. She wanted him to _mean_ it.

That is, if she wanted him. Daydreams probably didn't count, not when she also had the same thoughts about Zach Farr, the movie star turned pop idol, or Tifa from her Fists and Fury comic. And she'd eat nails rather than admit to _any_ of it, especially to Noct.

"There's really no way of signing up to take the trial without your father's permission?" Ignis asked. 

"I think I'd know," Iris said. "Monica just says I can be a Shield unofficially like this, but Noct will still get assigned one, and that feels wrong."

Ignis fell silent, fiddling with his glasses. "I need to go to the library," he said.

"What, right now?" Prompto asked. Ignis just shook his head and gave them a distracted wave, stumbling down the stairs. Prompto shrugged and plopped down between Iris and Noct.

"So," he said. "Can I be best man?"

Iris groaned and shoved him, and he went tipping over onto Noct, grinning wide. "I'm gonna go with Ignis," she said. "At least he's taking this seriously."

"Hey, I'm serious!" Prompto called, but Iris was already tripping down the stairs. She hooked her arm around Ignis' and made a face at Prompto, who laughed.

"What's the plan?" she asked Ignis, who still had that vague look he always got when he was trying to round up at least four lines of thought at once. He shrugged.

"Your father can't be the first to have a change of heart," he said. "There could be a precedent. If you don't mind digging through the Amicitia family tree, that is."

"Oh yeah, that sounds fun," Iris said. "But you won't find that in the library. We keep all the family books at home."

Which was how Clarus Amicitia came home to find Ignis Scientia, eldest of his line and future advisor to the crown, sitting on the couch with his nails painted a bright, vivid green, while Iris sat on the floor surrounded by books, smiling like a cat in a sunbeam.

And how Cor Leonis, Marshal of the Crownsguard, found a paper slipped into his in-tray that turned the Citadel on its head.

"No." Clarus' voice was a roar through the heavy stone doors of the throne room. Iris sat on the edge of a bench outside, hands on her knees, trying not to look at the gaggle of Crownsguard soldiers watching her out of the corner of their eyes. "She's a _child._ "

"Gladiolus held his trial at ten," Regis was saying. "And she's right. There is precedent--Your own great-grandmother--"

"Just because it's been done before doesn't mean it should happen now!"

Iris tapped her knees, kicking her heels on the carpet. Noctis stood next to her, arms crossed, gaze fixed firmly ahead. They were surrounded by a bubble of empty space, no one willing to venture too close to the subject of Clarus Amicitia's displeasure.

"Think of it this way," Regis said. Iris had to lean back to hear his voice, low as it was. "Say she takes the trial. She hasn't had the extensive training expected of a Shield. She'll fail the first test, and that will be the end of it. Or would you rather she keep pressing the subject until one of you breaks?"

"I'd say that's already happened, Reg."

There was a short silence. Noct and Iris exchanged uneasy glances as footsteps clacked across the marble, and when the doors opened, Iris jumped to her feet. She balked at the look on her father's face, but the king smiled tightly, a small measure of sympathy in his eyes.

"We'll have the trial," King Regis said. "But only the once. When this is over, there will be no more attempts."

"Yes, your majesty," Iris said. "I only need one."

Her father's shoulders hunched, and before Iris could call out to him, he stalked off down the hall, a shadow in his black and gold uniform.

That night, Iris got permission to stay with Monica. She didn't think she could face her dad yet, and Monica's apartment was warm and inviting, full of books and throw blankets and personal spa products Dustin kept passing her way.

"His sister sells them," Monica said, as the two of them sat with their feet in twin foot spas, bubbles hissing and popping under the sound of a movie playing on Monica's laptop. "I don't have the heart to say no. So. How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," Iris said. She scratched one of Monica's cats beneath the collar, and was rewarded with a deep, rumbling purr. "I don't know if Dad'll forgive me."

"That's hard to say," Monica said. Iris wished, just once, that Monica was the kind of person who sugar-coated the truth. "It's just that you're putting yourself at risk, Iris. If he sees you as a Shield, he sees Gladio."

"I know," Iris said. 

"So the way I see it," Monica said, turning down the volume on her computer. "You need to show him why he was so proud of Gladio, the day Gladio passed the trial. You need to show all the dedication that drove _him_ to be where he is, and then some. Not many people would go through what you have and willingly seek this out, you know." She smiled and reached out to brush back Iris' bangs. "You're something special, Iris. He's always said so. All you have to do is remind him."

Iris smiled back. "Thanks," she whispered. 

She fell asleep on Monica's couch, surrounded by cats and knitted blankets, and sank into uncertain dreams. Gladio was there, still just a young teenager as Iris remembered him, running through thick grass, blood over his eye. When Iris grabbed him at last, dragging him towards her, his head lolled back and his body collapsed at her feet, crumbling into dust.

She could taste dust in her mouth as she changed for the trial, alone in a small changing room next to the training yards.

The trial was more of a test of potential than a test of polished skill, but Iris remembered Gladio showing her the scar on his knee where a sword nicked him, and her mother had said that the whole thing was archaic and cruel. It was set up in a Circle, presided over by the current Shield, and three witnesses were assigned to test the potential Shield's abilities. Monica had refused to tell Iris who her witnesses would be--They were supposed to be anonymous, to prevent any hard feelings if someone got injured during the trial.

When Iris stepped out into the Circle, she saw the witnesses immediately. They were dressed in black, with hoods attached to mesh masks that only showed their eyes, and they were all watching Clarus, who prowled the Circle like a coeurl waiting to strike.

Iris slowly made her way into the center of the Circle. Right before the crowd of onlookers were three chairs, one for the king, one for the queen, and one for the crown prince or princess. The king and Noct were both there, and Iris' gaze slid towards the empty chair. She wondered what the queen would have thought of this. Whether she ever wished, like Clarus, that her family could live a normal life, safe from the dangers of Niflheim and magic and prophecy. 

_I'm doing this for your son,_ Iris thought, staring into the empty chair. The thought warmed her, and she looked to Noct and straightened her shoulders.

"Let us begin," said her father. Iris turned to face him and met a stranger with a stony expression, hands locked behind his back, chin raised high.

"The weapon of a Shield of Lucis is their contract to the crown given form," Clarus said. He spoke slowly, as though the words were being wrenched out of him. "It is the conduit through which a Shield makes their duty known. It is the last bulwark against the enemies of Lucis. Choose wisely."

Iris' gaze ran over the racks of weapons against the curved wall behind her father. Staves and broadswords, knives and short blades, round discs with jagged edges and heavy flails. She wondered how many of her ancestors had died with their hands at the hilts of those weapons. Iris shifted her feet, and her father's eyes narrowed, expectant, fearful. 

Slowly, Iris turned her back on the wall of glittering blades. Her father sighed, and the witnesses at the edge of the Circle gave each other tight, tentative looks of relief.

Iris raised her fists.

In the silence of the Circle, the sound of Noctis rising from his chair was impossibly loud.

"Iris," he said.

"I am the contract," Iris said. She forced herself to look at her father, who stood stricken by the wall, his face a mask of grief. 

"Very well," he said.

The first witness stepped into the Circle. A blade fell from the armiger, long and heavy and almost the size of Iris herself, and their muscles bulged as they prepared themselves to swing.

Iris darted to the side. She placed a foot on the flat of the blade, and the witness staggered, caught off-balance, as Iris launched herself into the air. She twisted, slamming a knee into the witness' back as her hands went to either side of their head. She turned their face gently to the right, a reminder of what she could have done with just a little more force, and struck them soundly in the back of the skull. They collapsed with a sigh. 

Iris turned to face the remaining witnesses, adjusted her footing, and raised her fists again.

The second witness was wary. They watched her behind their mask, eyes keen, careful, and their blade was too short for Iris to get close without a risk. She stayed where she was, ignoring the medics who helped her first opponent to their feet behind her, and waited for them to make the first move.

There. Swift as a snake, the witness' blade thrust into the space Iris had been a second before. She pivoted, years of dance lessons taking over, guiding her to their left side. Sure enough, they moved with her. She led them through the steps, testing their reactions, checking for an opening.

She took it, her breath catching in her throat, and drew even with the blade. It swept towards her, but Iris' fists were faster, and the witness stumbled back, wheezing. She followed them, beating them down to the edge of the Circle, where they dropped to a knee, spitting blood behind their mask.

Iris stepped back and looked her last witness in the eye. 

The first rubber bullet hit her square in the shoulder. Iris dropped to her knees, her body screaming in pain, only vaguely aware of her father's voice rising to a bellow, of Noctis striding through the small crowd, of doors slamming open. The pain choked her, filled her lungs, sent ripples through her spine. She raised a hand to her shoulder and bit down a scream--she didn't think anything was broken, but it _felt_ like it. She blinked up at the witness, who turned from her with a slow, deliberate air and lazily raised the gun to Noct's head.

She didn't hear the cries. Didn't see the flash of magic, didn't see anything but the witness' finger on the trigger of the gun. She moved without thinking, moved with all the speed of years of running up hills and chasing her friends up the stairs, with all the strength she didn't have that night so long ago, when her brother was dragged into the dark. She slammed into the witness, wrenching up their arms with a howl of pain that rang in her own ears, and the trigger suppressed with a dull click.

Nothing. It was empty. Iris stared into the mask of the witness, who banished the gun into their armiger and pressed a flask to her shoulder. Light bloomed between them, and the worst of the pain faded, leaving behind nothing more than a dull ache.

Then all the din Iris had pushed aside collapsed upon her, and Iris dropped to her feet, dazed, as the world descended into chaos.

 

\---

 

"Your majesty."

Theo shot a baleful look at Ardyn Izunia through the jagged rectangle of empty space in the morning paper. It was a cold day in Niflheim, and even with the heaters running full-blast, Theo had to spend all morning erecting massive white tents to keep off the snow. The least his king could do, really, was to leave at least _one_ croissant uneaten and the newspaper untouched. 

"Don't look at me that way," Ardyn said, licking butter off his thumb. "It's for your own good."

"I haven't had an episode in months," Theo said. He skimmed through the article. "And this is just about some kid in Lucis. Oh, _look._ You blacked out all the names again."

"I can say them, if you like," Ardyn said. "But they're just a bit _too_ close to the people who put you away--"

"Say them, then," Theseus said. "I'm not a child, your majesty. I can handle a--"

Ardyn flipped a creased piece of paper onto the table. It was a photo of a young girl on the steps of the Insomnian Citadel, holding up an arm as a crowd of reporters rushed up the stairs, cameras flashing. She had dark hair so far as Theo could tell, and a worried expression that looked almost familiar, with a little crease in her brow he'd sworn he'd seen before. And her eyes. There was something about her eyes.

"There we go," Ardyn said. "What did I tell you? We'll have to delay our plans after all. You, my dear, are sorely in need of more work.

"What?" Theo looked up at Ardyn and clenched his hand around the picture. Ardyn was leaning over the table, holding a hand to Theo's eyes. "Wait. Your majesty, wait, no, not yet, not--"

Theo sat up. There was a faint wind buffeting the walls of the tent, and Ardyn was sitting sideways in the only other chair, picking crumbs off his plate. The paper was wedged in the wastebin--Must not have been good news--and the tray of croissants...

"Glutton," Theo snapped, rising unsteadily from the table. His head spun for a moment, then the world righted itself again, cold and grey as always. "I worked hard for those."

"And I haven't?" Ardyn asked. "Go on, Theseus. Have a lie down. We're having a half day today."

Theo almost protested, but Ardyn had a point. His head didn't feel quite right--like there was cotton between his eyes, pushing his vision outwards, disturbing his balance. He staggered to his bed, and sank into it just as Ardyn, watching him thoughtfully, fished a rumpled picture out of the bin.

 

\---

 

_**"No More Shields! Prince Noctis Breaks Tradition, Young Amicitia Injured In Illegal Training Exercise."** _

_Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum declared an unexpected end to the time-honored position of Shield to the King this Monday, following an incident in which Iris Amicitia, 11, was injured in an unofficial training match at the Citadel._

_"Prince Noctis' decision has been long considered in the years since the death of his first Shield," a spokesman of the crown said, when the Insomnian Herald called for comment. "The tradition stems from a feudal system that Prince Noctis does not believe has a place in the Modern Era. The events of Monday only further strengthen his resolve for widespread class reform."_

_Iris and Clarus Amicitia were unavailable for comment. Iris Amicitia's injuries are said to be minimal, and she is expected to make a full recovery._

"Nice photo of you," Prince Noctis said, as Iris crumpled the paper into a wadded ball and shoved it in the trash. "You look like an actual celebrity. We'll get you some shades next time."

Iris groaned. It was the best she could hope for, really, but it still stung; After hours of watching her dad go from cold and furious to anxiously checking on her collarbone every few minutes, the Council had decided that so far as the public--and Niflheim--was concerned, there would be no more Shields. Iris would be the poster child for reform, a sign that the world was moving on to the Modern Era, and if she just happened to secretly be training with Noct and Cor Leonis in her spare time? Well, no one could blame her for wanting to see the prince. She was to be a Shield in all but name, and Niflheim would think they'd finally found a weak spot in the Lucian ranks. 

The fact that Monica came up with the ruse surprised absolutely no one.

"How's your dad taking it?" Noct asked. They were sitting in the park outside of Noct's high school, trying to ignore the paparazzi hiding out in the cafe on the other side of the street. "Dad says he's been... off, lately."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Iris said. "I mean, his only daughter's been lying to him for years. I'd be upset, too." She dug at the picnic table with her thumbnail. "It wouldn't be like this if Gladio were here."

"Hey." Noct kicked Iris' feet under the table. "Stop it. Try and think of it this way. How proud do you think Gladio would be if he saw you the other day? I bet he'd cry."

"Gladio cried at everything," Iris said, with a wan smile.

"He cried when you graduated daycare," Noct said. "And he definitely cried when you were born."

"What, really?" Iris leaned on her elbows. "No one told me about that one."

"Yeah. Showed up at my place in his pjs, right, because he thought his life was over and his parents weren't gonna love him anymore--"

"Oh my _gods,_ " Iris said, putting her face in her hands. "He didn't."

"Dad had to carry him back. Gladio was eight, Iris, and Dad had to _carry_ him."

Iris snorted. "Poor Gladdy."

"He would've cried like a baby when you got that one witness in the back of the neck," Noct said. "Hands down."

"Oh, Noct," Iris said, in a half mocking voice, "that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."

"Wow," Noct said. "I must suck at compliments."

"Maybe a little." Iris stood up, and half the amateur reporters across the street pulled out their phones. "Come on. I think I'd better stop at Leon's Bakery. Dad's gonna need a lot of bribery to get through _this._ "

Iris came home with a boxed ice cream cake in her father's favorite flavor, a boring documentary about the history of the railroad of Tenebrae, and a book of crosswords, all clumsily wrapped in paper and shoved haphazardly on the table. She was just considering putting the cake in the freezer when the door opened, and her father slipped through, holding a paper bag in one hand.

"Ah," he said.

"Oh," said Iris.

They stared at each other, trapped on opposite sides of the foyer.

"There's cake," Iris said. "And a movie on trains."

"Huh." Clarus locked the door after him, and Iris rocked on her heels, caught between wanting to help him remove his coat and the fear of breaking the uneasy peace they'd made. Clarus grimaced and set down the bag. His hands moved slowly on the buckles of his boots. "Funny thing," he said. "I just got a movie about that pop sugar group."

"Sugar Gum Adventure?" Iris asked. "Dad, they're--" for kids, she almost said, but she looked to the bag again, then back at the cake slowly melting on the table.

"Can I get your coat?" she asked. Her voice sounded younger than she meant it to be, tearful and thin. Clarus stopped, one foot out of his formal boots, his coat trailing on the floor, and straightened.

"Oh, Iris," he said, and his words seemed to pack in everything at once, all the fear and grief and love he'd been warned to hold at bay, an entire world's worth of regret. Iris ran to him, knocking him back a step as she jumped into his arms. He held her off her feet, letting her press her cheek to his shoulder, and rested a hand on the back of her head.

"I know it was wrong to do it that way," Iris said, "but I didn't think there was any other way, and I wanted to--I wanted--"

"I know," Clarus said. His voice was one long sigh. "I forgot how it felt. How personal it could be."

"It's gonna be different this time," Iris said. "I promise, Dad."

Clarus only held her, standing lopsided in one boot in the middle of the foyer, their peace offerings forgotten, and for a moment, Iris felt as though it were just the two of them in all the world, holding each other in the shadow of an uncertain future, unwilling to let go.


	4. Chapter 4

Iris Amicitia, named Insomnia's Best Dressed three years running in Eyes Open Weekly, the founder of two charities and up-and-coming media darling, opened the door to her and her father's apartments to find an apologetic intern buckling under an armful of flowers.

"Oh, no," she said.

"I'm so sorry, Lady Amicitia," the intern said. She shifted on her feet, a letter slipping out from under a bouquet of carnations. "I know you said to throw them out, but this last one's all the way from Accordo."

"You'd think I was dying," Iris said. She held out her hands, and the intern carefully eased the flowers over, tender as a nurse moving a newborn. 

"I mean." The intern coughed. She looked to be about Iris' age, probably in her first few years of college, and her bright blue hair was going black at the roots. "It's just kind of sad, you know? We all thought you two were gonna..."

"It's okay," Iris said. "Just... Keep the flowers, next time. I'm kind of drowning in them."

The intern blushed, and Iris backed into the apartment, scattering petals over the foyer. She shoved the door shut with a shoulder and turned with an aggrieved sigh.

"Oh, no," Clarus said, from where he was eating breakfast at the kitchen counter. His eyes crinkled with amusement, and Iris stomped past a row of vases on the way to dump the flowers in the trash. "More well-wishers?"

"It's getting out of control," Iris said. She picked an errant letter out of the trash and put the rest of the mail on the counter. "Ever since the news about the, the thing got out..."

"Noctis' betrothal to Lady Lunafreya," Clarus said, in that even tone Iris knew was him five seconds away from making a poorly-timed attempt at official fatherly wisdom. "You know, Iris, for a young lady who doesn't seem to care--"

"I don't," Iris said. She didn't. It was fine. She wasn't twelve anymore, silently mooning after Noct in the training yards while she, Noct and Cor went through weapons practice. Besides, Noct and Luna had been writing each other since they were kids. They were practically star-crossed. She'd have to be some kind of _monster_ to be resentful now. "I mean it," she added, when her dad gave her a searching look. 

"Well," Clarus said, draining the last of his coffee. "I'm clearly not the expert on being a Shield and juggling romantic inclinations at the same time. It isn't as though I, oh, married at seventeen or anything. What would _I_ know?"

"Da-ad." Iris grabbed her father's shoulder for balance and stood on her tiptoes, kissing him on the cheek. "I get it."

"Do you?"

"Buy me flowers, then," Iris said, and Clarus grinned. It had been a while since they'd had a morning to themselves, especially after the envoy from Niflheim arrived the week before, kicking Insomnia into an ants nest. "You're still up for dinner tonight?"

"Wouldn't dare miss it," he said, and something flickered in his eyes, an echo of the grief that never really went away. Iris smiled back, then fled down the hall to get changed. If they were going to leave for Galdin Quay in the morning, and Noct _still_ hadn't finished packing up his things to be moved to the honeymoon apartments, Iris was going to be lucky to make it to dinner on time.

 

\---

 

Theseus hated the ocean. It wasn't just the movement of the waves--Even after years of training, his constant dizzy spells remained, and the sea only made it worse--but every island and jutting rock looked like the same miserable patch of earth where Ardyn had found him, curled up with his back to the wall, barely remembering his own name. The actual island was close, he knew--Angelgard, a half-moon shape against the pale sky--but Theo spent most of his time going over his armor, polishing the sleek helmet Ardyn insisted he wear while he waited behind the wall of Insomnia for his orders.

It was his fault it had taken so long to get to that point. The empire had been ready to invade years ago--Theo was not, and Ardyn, contrary asshole that he was, sometimes, was too honorable to leave his Shield behind.

Theo couldn't remember a time before the dark, when he was left in an empty cave that was his cell, dragged out now and then to be wired to machines fitted with magitech, then tossed back to lick his wounds. He only knew that it was Ardyn who'd found him, Ardyn who broke him out, Ardyn who'd carried his name on his tongue, easing Theo back into something of what he must have been before. He could stay at his side for the rest of his life and never make up for what Ardyn had done for him.

"Any more polish and you'll blind someone," Ardyn said, coming up from behind Theo to lean over his shoulder. He was dressed in what counted as his best, a mash-up of too many fabrics and patterns to count, and his wide sleeve tickled Theo's cheek. "Put that away, and let's play that card game you like."

"You always cheat," Theo pointed out, and Ardyn gave a careless shrug. He sat down opposite Theo, and a deck of cards appeared in his hands in a flash of red light. "You cut, I'll deal."

"So untrusting," Ardyn said. He cut the deck, and Theo started to shuffle what was left. "You should head in tonight. We'll be passing the rock by sunset."

Theo smiled wryly. "I think I can handle it," he said. 

"You might, but I can't," Ardyn said. "So you'll be joining me tonight for some wine and light reading."

Theo smiled down at his hands and started to deal the cards. "Sure," he said. "Whatever you say."

 

\---

 

Iris sat down at the small dinner table with her father, holding a box in her hands.

"I had it altered to fit you," Clarus said. There were spots on the top of the box, rolling to the edge. He leaned over and brushed Iris' cheek with a thumb. "Just in case."

Iris bit her cheek. She slid a hand under the lid of the box and felt the delicate lace of her mother's wedding dress, which had taken her grandmother a year to make. She looked up at her father, who somberly kissed her forehead, still holding her cheek in one hand.

"She'd be so proud of you," he said, and for just a second, Iris knew, with an empty, grasping helplessness, that he was saying goodbye.

Then he sat up, and Iris set the box on the counter, and all the maybes and possibly's and could be's rushed in to fill the gap. He'd be fine. _They'd_ be fine. Iris would help see Noct to Altissia, and one day, after all of this was done and the war was over, maybe Iris would put on her mother's dress.

Maybe.

 

\---

 

When Theo lay back on his cot in the boat, he dreamed of names on a wall, the letters crawling over each other until they were nothing but nonsense, all while Theo tried desperately to put them back together again. He woke twice, once on his own, gasping in the dark, and the second time with Ardyn's hand on his chest.

"Go back to sleep, my shield," Ardyn said, and Theo reached for him, taking comfort in the familiar slide of silk under his fingers. Ardyn leaned down, and Theo caught his mouth in his, urgent, frantic, almost thoughtless in his desperation for contact. Ardyn eased him back to bed, and behind the warmth in his golden eyes, there was a resolve hard as flint, cold and measureless as the sea below.

"I'll need you tomorrow."

 

\---

 

"I'm not gonna say I told you so," Iris said, sitting on the back of the Regalia with her legs crossed, lathering sunscreen on her bare arms, "but I definitely told you so."

"You don't even have a license," Noct said. "And suddenly you're an expert on cars?" 

Iris smiled back at him. "Less talking, more pushing," she said.

Noct glared at her, and Iris climbed over the back of the car, sliding to land on the asphalt. "Boys," she said, and braced both hands on the bumper. "Okay, ready? Count of three. One. Two."

"Three-push," Prompto called, and the car veered to the left as Noct and Prompto pushed at the wrong time, shoes scraping on the street. Iris was already sweating through her black cami, and her skirt felt like a flap of leather sticking to her legs. Her tattoo was still new, only just able to be exposed to the sun, but Iris was hyper aware of it at all times, sneaking glances at the fiery feathers floating up her arms. A phoenix had seemed like a good idea when she turned eighteen--too mythical to be considered a proper choice for a Shield, but just right for Iris personally--but now she wondered if she had gone a little overboard. Oh, well. It was way too hot to wear a jacket, and with the Regalia officially out of gas and sputtering like a dying behemoth, there was nothing for it.

"What do you think, Noct?" she asked. "Definitely something for the wedding scrapbook, right?"

"If you're making a wedding scrapbook, I'm firing you," Noct said, grunting as he pushed and scrabbled at her side.

"Nah, dude," Prompto gasped. "That's totally me."

"Then. Fired."

"From friendship? Bro! I thought we had something!"

"If you can talk, you aren't pushing hard enough," Ignis called from the driver's seat. 

"Maybe we can hook up the car to a flock of chocobos," Iris said. "Like a sled."

"Oh my gods, that would be..." Prompto's eyes glazed over. "We should do it. Noct, let's get a chocobo. Let's get twenty chocobos."

"That's it," Noct said. "We're officially delirious."

Iris laughed, a little breathless, and braced her boots on the road as they pushed their broken, rattling car down an empty road, inch by inch, staggering their way towards Galdin.

 

\---

 

Theo always knew Galdin Quay was nothing like Niflheim, but no one prepared him for what it would be like to see it in person. Tourists sunned themselves on beach towels and stone benches, birds wheeled in the cloudless sky, and locals drove dirt bikes over the sloping hills and along the edge of high cliffs, whooping in the distance. There was even a live band, stamping and singing and kicking up a fuss in the middle of the parking lot, where Ardyn's car was waiting for them.

A sleek black car veered around the bend, screeching to a stop next to Ardyn's convertible. It was full of young people close to Gladio's age, mostly men in somber colors and gelled hair, with one bright splash of color among them, tumbling out of the car and dragging them towards the band.

She was a young woman, dark haired and wiry with muscle, with a tattoo down her back shaped like a phoenix wreathed in flame. Her sundress was a slash of red against the greys and blacks of the men around her, and when one of them lifted her into the air, she flung her head back, eyes half-closed in a laugh. Her gaze met his, and in that instant, standing on the dock with his king at his back, Theo was struck by a yearning that pulled at him like a physical ache in his chest. It wasn't the way he wanted Ardyn, exactly--this was closer to the way he craved the sun, bone-deep and almost too powerful to bear.

Then the woman dropped to her feet again, and she was just another stranger, hopping up the steps to the boardwalk with her arms swinging. 

"Helmet on, Theo," Ardyn warned, and Theo closed his eyes as Ardyn clasped the helmet over his head, fitting it securely to his leather and plated armor just as the small crowd of tourists strode up the dock towards them.

 

\---

 

Iris had spotted the Chancellor of Niflheim from the parking lot. It wasn't hard to tell, not when she'd learned how to guess most of Monica's passwords years ago, and the dossiers on the reclusive Chancellor Izunia had proved... Strangely blank, for someone with the ear of the emperor. The only photo she'd found was blurry and indistinct, but Iris had an eye for clothes, and the man standing on the patio of the Mother of Pearl restaurant was either Izunia himself, or a very good copycat with terrible taste in scarves.

Still, she'd asked Noct to lift her in the air just in case, back by the live band, so she could get a better look. But it wasn't Izunia who worried her, really. It was the man next to him. It didn't matter whether he put on that creepy scaled mask or not--He held himself like a fighter. Not just any fighter, but one like Cor or Noct, someone who'd spent most of their life training for one purpose, honing their body into a weapon.

Someone like Iris. 

She took the lead as they headed up the boardwalk, swinging her arms like a woman with all the time in the world. Her sundress whispered against her legs, and she forced a bright, sunny smile as she tripped up the steps towards the Mother of Pearl.

"Your excellency!" she cried. Half the restaurant fell silent as every eye in a thirty foot radius turned her way. She put on her best public face and thrust a hand out to Ardyn. "Welcome to Lucis. My name's Iris Amicitia, temporary representative of the Crown for the royal wedding."

"Ah," Ardyn said. People were starting to take out their phones. "Yes. A pleasure." He took Iris' hand in a firm grip. Fingerless gloves, she thought. Callouses on his fingertips. She slid her hand up just a fraction and felt the leather strap of a knife guard under his sleeve. "Do the boats br--"

"Who's your friend?" Iris asked, and the masked man shifted, falling into a defensive stance. She held out her hand to him in turn. 

He didn't take it. 

Iris' hand bobbed in the air. "It's okay," she said. "I don't bite."

"Theo," Ardyn said, and snapped his fingers the way Prompto did sometimes when Noct fell asleep over reports and Prompto wanted to watch him fall out of his chair. The masked man went stiff, then slowly stood to attention. "Go on. Shake the young lady's hand." 

Theo looked at Iris, and she resisted the sudden urge to jerk away, to put as much space between herself and this strange, silent sentinel as possible.

Theo engulfed her hand in his and gently squeezed her fingers.

"You'll have to forgive my guard," Ardyn said. "He isn't at home in crowds. Go on, dear. Wait in the car."

"Yes," Theo said, and Iris suppressed a shudder. His hand slipped out of hers, and she twisted round to watch him quietly plod his way around the others, giving Noct a wide berth.

"Is he alright?" Iris asked. "His voice sounded... strange."

"I'll tell him you asked after him," the chancellor said. "Do the boats bring you here? Well, you're out of luck. They won't bring you forth."

"They brought you," Iris said.

Ardyn's smile didn't so much as flicker. "Perhaps I misunderstood the harbor master," he said. He kept trying to catch Noct's eye, but Iris shifted from foot to foot, blocking his way. "I must be off. Can't keep my guard waiting. He does worry."

Silver flashed in Ardyn's fingers, and Iris jumped to intercept it, catching a heavy silver coin in one hand. 

"Consider it an allowance," Ardyn said.

Iris waited until he'd passed through them to whisper, "Allowance? Is he our dad now?" Noct snorted, and Prompto burst into a cackle of laughter. 

Iris didn't feel much like laughing, though. She stood on the dock, watching Ardyn swagger up to his car, where the hooded man bent with his hand on his heart, mimicking the proper bow of a Shield in perfect form.

 

\---

 

_"What do you see, Theo?"_

_"I see the girl. She's watching us."_

_"Clever little thing." The car door slammed. The engine stuttered to life. The man known as Theo sat ramrod straight in his seat, waiting for orders. "You do know I hate seeing you like this."_

_"Yes."_

_"But it's necessary. Can't have you slipping up before the main event, can we?"_

_Theo's hands clenched on his lap, and somewhere in the back of the roaring emptiness of his mind, he could feel the beginning of a cresting wave. Anger, perhaps. Or something else. Something deeper._

_"No."_

 

\---

 

"Creepy shit," Noct said, bending down to pet a small white cat on the edge of the boardwalk. "Dad's gonna have his hands full dealing with that one. Did you see that guy with him? What's his deal, do you think?"

"No idea," Iris said. She turned the coin over and over in her hand, still watching the chancellor's car as it backed out of the parking lot. "But I think he might be trouble."

 

\---

 

Of course it all went to hell. Clarus had known the moment Nyx Ulric burst through the throne room doors, alerting them to Lunafreya's disappearance, and Captain Drautos was nowhere to be found. There were only two reasons for Drautos to be gone at such an important juncture, and despite Regis' fear that he'd gone the way of the Princess and was trapped in enemy hands, Clarus had been trained to suspect the worst. So when the windows shattered and General Glauca crashed into the marble with the flash of the king's own magic billowing at his feet, Clarus only raised his sword and braced himself for impact.

It didn't come. A second figure dropped beside Glauca, heavily, with no magic to ease his fall, and _he_ was the first to charge for Regis. He held his sword in a defensive sweeping gesture, and Clarus frowned as he drew up his own blade to block him.

Downward strike. A sliding parry. Dodging in a perfect example of the Eagle form. This new soldier had been trained in the fighting style of an Amicitia, and trained well. Out of the corner of his eye, Clarus could see that Glauca was trying to flank them, warping out of reach of Regis' strikes. He had to act fast. Clarus hooked the man's foot around his and sent him sprawling, denting the side of his helmet, and raised his sword for the killing blow. 

The man beneath him ripped off his helmet, gasping for air, and Clarus froze.

 

Regis, ignoring the insistent hammering of his heart as he drew on the last dwindling supplies of his magic, was the only one close enough to hear the word Clarus gasped out, his voice cracked and breaking.

_Gladio._

 

The last thing Clarus Amicitia thought, as pain sliced through his body like a burning iron, was that Iris had been right all along. His son's eyes were vague and dull, with no light behind them, and he looked up at Clarus with the distant expression of a stranger.

Not dead, but gone.

 

_There was blood on Theo's armor._

_General Glauca placed a foot on the false Shield's back, and Theo stood as the body fell to the floor. He stepped over it, and the false king, Regis Lucis Caelum, the man his king ordered him to strike down, looked into Theo's eyes and cursed._

_"Good gods," Regis said, as Theo raised his sword. "What have they done?"_

_Theseus didn't have an answer. He simply stepped forward, and when the king tried to parry him with all the force of a dying man, magic blooming between their blades, Theo pushed him to his knees and caught him by the throat._

_The sound of his blade piercing Regis Lucis Caelum's chest was impossibly loud._

_"Well done," General Glauca said, over Theo's head. The wave in Theo's mind was rising, swelling over the emptiness like a great shadow over a stretch of beach, threatening to drown him. Theo withdrew his sword and lowered the king to the floor._

_"We need to find Lunafreya," Glauca said. "The ring--"_

_"I have orders," Theo said. The wave was starting to break. There was blood on his chest. Blood on his fingers. Words crawling on the floor._

_"Yes, and your orders are to follow mine--"_

_"I have orders," Theo said. The king was staring at him. He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes._

_He had orders. He needed to find Ardyn. Ardyn would push the wave back._

_Slowly, Theo stood and walked around the body of the king, raising his radio to his lips._

_"Take me back," he said. "It's done. It's done. Take me back."_

_His boot struck something hard. Theo looked down. There was a man on the floor._

_"Gods damn it, Izunia said you'd behave," said Glauca._

_Words on his face._

_"Clarus," Theo said._

_Glauca's hand landed heavily on his shoulder, and Theo spun, sword drawn._

_The wave broke._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ardyn/Gladio dubcon warning in this chapter, as Gladio is definitely not in a good emotional state at this point...

There was something odd about Amicitias and Caelums, Iris thought, as rain lashed the roof of the Regalia, drumming too faintly to mask the soft, hitching breaths that clouded the glass of Prince Noctis' window. Love didn't fit right in their bodies. It settled uneasily, built up until it pushed aside everything else, and made copies of itself in every emotion it touched. They loved so deeply that it nearly killed them.

 _Did_ kill them.

Noct tipped his head onto the window, and Iris thought of her father as a boy, standing in the Amicitia crypts. Of Gladio on the balcony. Her mother in bed, eyes closed, hair spilling over her pillow.

Smoke rose from the ruins of central Insomnia, mingling with the low rain clouds rolling in from the south. Mud sprayed in an arc as the Regalia slowed to a halt, and Iris, still in the blue sundress she'd planned to wear on the boat that morning, slipped on her gloves. The knuckles were padded with brass, and they gleamed as she stepped out on the road.

"Hey," Noct said. He tossed her his jacket over the roof of the car, and Iris wordlessly put it on. He didn't have to tell her what he meant--She could read the look in his eyes well enough. If what they'd heard in the news was true, they were all that was left. The last king. The last shield. 

"Prompto," Iris said. Her voice sounded harsh, distant. "Cover fire. Ignis, I need you in the back."

"Understood." Ignis' eyes were red-rimmed--His own parents lived in the Citadel, Iris recalled. She pushed the thought down.

"Alright," she said. "Let's go."

The MTs found them in the cliffs. Iris and Noct stayed close, cleaving a path through the worst of them while Prompto took shots at snipers overhead. Ignis rolled an ice flask down the hill after the last straggling MTs, which slid and crashed their way to the ruined buildings below.

On the plateau, Iris looked out onto the smoking ruin that had once been her home, while Noct fell to pieces a few feet away. Iris slid her hands in the pockets of Noct's jacket and took a deep breath. Ignis took her shoulder, and Iris let herself lean into his touch for just a moment before she gathered herself, turned on her heel, and started back down the slope.

She held it together by breaking down the steps of the day in her head. Find Cor. Stay with Noct. Don't let him charge into the fight. She made the others wait by the trench while she and Cor--Who had dust in his hair, and lines around the eyes she hadn't seen before--tore through the enemy. Iris brought the scouts and snipers down one by one, with a brutal, quiet efficiency that she didn't even register until the last MT was at her feet, their head twisted, limbs akimbo, like a rag doll thrown carelessly to the floor.

It wasn't until they staggered into a haven by Hunter HQ that Iris let herself take a breath. She excused herself to find the bathroom and slipped down into the dark, wandering through the ruined buildings until she found what used to be a kitchen, with a wall that almost covered her.

Noct found her a few minutes later. His hair was a mess, tangled and wild after their day in the trench, and he had a cold, haunted look in his eyes. Anger had kept him going for most of the day, but now, Noct just looked tired and young, nothing like a new king coming into his power.

"Scoot over," he said, and Iris shifted, making room on the cold stone foundation. He squeezed in next to her, and Iris drew up her knees, shivering in the unexpected chill of a desert evening. Noct nudged her shoulder with his, and carefully lay a hand on her back.

"Prompto's parents are okay," he said, after a while. "They can't leave the city right now, but he says they missed the worst of the fighting."

"Oh," Iris said. "That's... I'm glad."

"Ignis is keeping quiet, though." Noct's hand slid up to Iris' shoulder. "Not a good sign."

"Probably not."

Crickets sang in the bushes surrounding the burned-out house. Music played on a distant car radio, and voices stirred in the Hunter HQ, drifting in the breeze. Iris sank her hand in Noct's hair, kneading it slightly, and Noct's head tilted listlessly to the side, tipping into hers. His breath was warm on her cheek.

"You didn't have to be my Shield," he said. "After Gladio." He swallowed, and Iris held her breath, staring at her knees. "Thanks for doing it anyways."

His lashes fluttered on her cheek when he closed his eyes, and Iris pulled him towards her, running her hand through his tangled hair as he whispered a lifetime of apologies into her shoulder, cracked lips brushing over her skin.

 

\---

 

Theo woke to the taste of leather in his mouth.

"You return to us," Ardyn said, from somewhere in the formless grey mist above him. Theo tried to sit up, but jerked back as the thick leather straps holding him to the bed strained and groaned. The familiar steel walls of Ardyn's airship sharpened into view, and Theo tugged experimentally on the bindings around his wrists.

"I apologize," Ardyn said. He was stripped down to his undershirt and trousers, and he was making quick work of the straps on Theo's left side. "You weren't in the best state when I found you. Half the Niflheim army wants your head, you know."

"Please," Theo rasped. His voice was raw and scraped thin, like he'd been screaming. "Make sense. Just once."

"You don't remember?" Ardyn leaned over him, and Theo reached up with his newly-freed left arm and ran his hand down the ridged folds of Ardyn's shirt. "You may have, mm, had a moment. You killed General Glauca in the throne room. And most of the MTs we sent to collect you. You were very nearly wild."

"I... I what?" Theo squinted. His memory of the past day was muddled, like looking through deep water to the sky above. "I remember... A girl. A girl on the dock. And someone with... Words on a wall...? Why did I--"

"Not to worry," Ardyn said. He pressed a button, and the straps on Theo's legs slithered free. "Glauca had served his usefulness, and you did your job. You were..." He ran a hand up Theo's neck, and when his fingers slipped over his lips, Theo kissed them. "Magnificent. I'm so proud of you, Theseus. I've never had a Shield like you, not even when I..." He paused, and his fingers hooked around Theo's jaw. He opened his mouth obediently, and Ardyn kissed him, hungrily, casting a shadow over Theo as he climbed into the cot.

"You were made for this," Ardyn whispered. His hands traveled down Theo's bare chest, holding him down. "What a waste it would have been to let your gifts be squandered by the unworthy."

"Ardyn," Theo said, as teeth dragged at the sensitive skin under his ear. "I think... I think something happened. I--"

"Oh, no," Ardyn said. "You were perfect." He kissed him again, and Theo moaned into his mouth as his hand traveled downward. "And you were mine. Finally, utterly..." 

"Your majesty," Theo said. Ardyn smiled and grasped him by the hips, fingers digging into his skin, and Theo let a different sort of fog settle over him, masking the strange, gnawing emptiness that clawed in the back of his mind, ripping him apart piece by shuddering piece.

 

\---

 

The sun rose, and the world moved on. It didn't stop for dead kings or their shields; Hunters still posted their bounties on diner windows, cars idled by the side of the road, their owners streaked with dirt and grease, and the tombs of Noct's ancestors lay cloaked in palmettos and buried in stone, waiting.

When they walked together through the barricade of Duscae, Noct stepped into the path of the sun, and birds took off from the hills that rose to meet them, wheeling and twisting in erratic patterns over the sky. Iris caught her breath at the sight of it, and when they piled into the car at last, she searched Noct's face, trying to find a hint of the vision he'd briefly become, standing in the sun.

"You know what," Noct said, climbing to the back of the car, "I bet we have time to see some of those chocobos, Prompto."

Iris sighed. Maybe it was just a trick of the light after all.

They were turning off into a dirt road when Iris stood, holding onto Noct for balance. She placed a foot on the back of the Regalia, and Ignis glanced back with a look of pure panic and slowed the car to a crawl.

"I need a boost," Iris said, and Noct sighed, holding out his hands. Iris placed one foot in his palms, the other on his shoulder, and squinted down the slope. There, hidden behind a copse of trees, was an ugly grey airship, the bay doors swung wide.

"Imperials," she said, and the car jerked to a stop. "I don't see any armor--Do you, Prompto?"

Prompto, who had the best eyes out of all of them, sat up. "No MTs."

"Doesn't mean they aren't there," Iris said. She jumped down from Noct's shoulder. "I'm going on ahead."

"No," Noct said. "No, none of us go alone."

"I'll be careful," Iris said. "Noct, can you get my fatigues out of the armiger?"

Noct scowled darkly, but he summoned a loose grey and green shirt and matching pants and handed them to her with a grunt. Iris climbed out of the car and into the bushes, where she changed into them, then dropped her discarded black dress into the Regalia. Noct blinked at it, then up at her, looking as though she'd just stripped naked in the middle of the street.

"What?" Iris said. "They're just fatigues, Noct. Give me five minutes."

"Huh," he said, eloquently.

Iris rolled her eyes and disappeared into the trees. The woods were new, not yet old enough to choke out the underbrush, and Iris had to step carefully to avoid crushing leaves and branches underfoot. She kept low, slinking along twisted oak trees and scraggly bushes, until she reached the rusted gate bordering the chocobo post.

"...here or Lestallum," a familiar voice was saying, on the other side of a caravan. "Have a little faith in my intel, Theo."

"I do," said a dry, sarcastic voice. A man. Someone she knew. Iris strained to hear, slowly inching along the fence. "I'm the one who reads it to you."

"One can hardly expect me to know every nuance of the Niflheim language at my age. All those gendered words..."

"Focus, Ardyn."

Something cracked behind Iris. She whirled, hands clenching into fists, to find Noct at her back, standing out like a sore thumb in his black shirt and capris. Ignis and Prompto were behind him, clomping their way through the woods, alerting half the universe to their presence.

 _What the hell?_ Iris mouthed. Noct grinned and tapped his ear.

 _Can't hear you,_ he mouthed back. Iris glared and made the sign for him to stay put.

"Shit!" Prompto said, stubbing his foot on a rock. Iris threw her hands in the air and pointed towards the road.

"What's that?" The man's voice--Theo. Iris cursed and pointed again, and Noct hid behind the oak beside him, while Ignis ushered Prompto into a bush. Iris took a step back, preparing to join Noct, when footsteps crashed around the caravan and a man stepped into the shadow it made, heading right for Iris.

"You," he said. "The girl from the beach."

"Uh." Iris wished she hadn't swapped out her dress. "Look, I. I'm kind of, I'm a little lost--"

"Like hell you are." The man wrenched open a gap in the fence with both hands, and Iris frantically signed _stay_ behind her back as he took her free wrist in an iron grip.

Iris looked up into the scarred, scowling face of a ghost, and the world fell around her, peeling away the years that had made her a Shield, the nights spent staring at vents in the wall, of terrifying mornings when she ran to her father's room to make sure he was still breathing, of hours staring at an empty coffin. Suddenly, Iris was seven again, a broken lamp in her hand, stumbling onto her brother's balcony with nothing but fear to drive her.

"Gladdy?"

"Try the innocent act on someone else," Gladio said. His eyes were just as she remembered, amber like hers, but they were narrowed in suspicion, and when he jerked her forward, Iris staggered after him. "You might have the rest of the world fooled, but you walk like a fighter. The hell are you doing out here? Following us?"

"Gladio," Iris said. She could hear movement behind her. "Gladio, it's me. Iris. It's Iris."

"Yeah, you told us on the dock. And my name ain't Gladio. Ardyn!"

Iris scrabbled for Gladio's jacket, dragging herself up until her toes barely scraped the ground. "It's Iris," she said. "I tried to save you on the balcony when you were fifteen, remember? They pumped the house full of gas, and you--you hurt your eye, right the--"

Gladio growled in frustration and tried to throw Iris through the gap in the fence. She landed on her feet, skidding in the grass, and a heavy hand clapped down on her shoulder. She spun, twisting the hand at the wrist, and Ardyn Izunia sidestepped out of her way, shaking out his fingers.

"Oh, dear," he said. "If it isn't the representative of the crown, Iris Amicitia. Or rather, Lady Amicitia now. The title does pass to you, does it not?"

Iris glanced back at Gladio, who was blocking the gate with a forbidding, unfamiliar expression, then back to Ardyn. "What did you do to him?"

"Me? I can hardly claim cred--"

Iris brought up her knee, and felt a warmth at her back, the only warning she got before Gladio was on her, a hand at the nape of her neck.

She stood very still, fists raised, chest heaving, as the woods behind her exploded.

"Let go of her!"

Light flashed out of the corner of her eye--Noct's armiger, still so new, just two blades whirling around him as he burst out from the undergrowth. Iris stamped on the arch of Gladio's foot, and his grip loosened just enough for her to slip out of reach. 

"It's okay," Iris said. She looked Gladio in the eye, trying to find even a hint of recognition. None came. "It's okay, Gladio. I'll get you back."

"Gladio?" Noct asked.

"Goodness, what theatrics," Ardyn drawled. "There he is, Theseus. The son of the false king. You know what to do."

Gladio's brow furrowed, and he glanced at Ardyn, who smiled faintly. Then Gladio shrugged, turned to Noct, and shifted into an offensive position.

Noct stood frozen in place, a hand on the hilt of his sword, lips parted in shock.

Gladio moved fast, but Iris was faster. She intercepted Gladio before the sword dropped into his hand, striking him in the right shoulder. He hissed and dragged his sword in the earth, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"Noct!" Iris shouted. She held out a hand, and Noct instinctively took it. He tossed her, bending his good knee for Iris to use as a springboard, and Iris flipped over Gladio, grabbing at his jacket on the way down. She was too close for him to use his sword without leaving an opening, so he dropped it, backhanding her across the face.

Iris spat blood on the ground. "Get back to the car!" she shouted. "Now!" She ducked Gladio's arm and wrenched it back, wincing as it popped. Gladio grunted and ran her into the side of the caravan. The world swam with spots of light as Iris was dragged face-first along the plastic siding. She jabbed at Gladio's eye, and he dropped her just long enough for her to latch onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Come with me or I'll break it," she croaked. 

Ardyn laughed. "Oh, I'd love to see _that._ Theo, oblige the lady and stay still, will you? Go on." 

Iris' hands trembled on Gladio's face. He grabbed her by the legs and threw her to the ground, where she landed with a thump that jolted the air from her lungs. She gasped, furious tears stinging her eyes, as Ardyn raised a foot over her neck.

Something dark sprayed through the air as thunder cracked in Iris' ears--A gunshot. _Prompto._ Ardyn staggered, and Gladio roared with anger, grabbing Iris by the ankle. She kicked out, but her movements were sluggish with pain and shock, her breath hitching in her throat. 

There was another shot, and Ardyn fell forward. Gladio dropped Iris to go to him, and Iris tried and failed to pull herself to her feet.

"In the car, Iris!" Noct shouted. Iris scrambled backwards, still panting for breath. 

"Can't leave him," she said. "I can't--"

"Iris, that's an order!" Someone wrapped their arms around Iris'--Noct, he smelled like Noct--and the hum of magic built in the air.

"No," Iris said, as the hum rose to a whine. "No, Noct, no, it's Gladio--"

Light flashed around her, and Iris lurched as she was warped into the backseat of the Regalia, Noct wrapped around her, holding her down as Ignis slammed the car into reverse. Iris cried out again, a hoarse, broken scream that ripped through her as it came, and Noct closed his eyes, teeth gritted in a tight grimace, as Iris' brother disappeared behind the trees.


	6. Chapter 6

"You need a potion," Noct said.

Iris sat pressed to the door of the Regalia, popping her knuckles one by one, ignoring the blood that rolled down her neck. Prompto and Ignis were deathly quiet, barely daring to move a muscle, glancing at her through the rearview mirror as they drove back through the barricade and into the dust of Leide.

"Iris." Noct inched closer, and Iris turned her shoulder to him, blinking out at the red cliffs sinking into the desert. "You'll get a scar."

"Good," Iris said. "Maybe Gladio and I will match."

Noct held out a potion, and Iris snatched it out of his hand. She uncapped the bottle and poured it over her stinging face, cringing at the tickle of magic closing the long scrapes over her jaw and nose. Noct touched her chin, and Iris faced him with a jerk, clenching her hand on the top of the door.

"We waited too long," Noct said. His voice was soft. Too soft. "They're hard to see, but..."

Iris sat up, peering into the rearview mirror. Silvery scars ran up the left side of her face, faint and jagged, like the claw-marks of a coeurl. She sat back and ran a hand over them, brushing against the ridges they made in her skin.

"You should have left me there," she said. Prompto twisted around, mouth open, and Iris rounded on Noct. "I could have taken him. I could have knocked him out, or--"

"They were gonna kill you," Noct said, still in that soft, quiet voice.

"You don't know that!" Iris' shout echoed back off the cliffs. "That was Gladio, Noct! He was... Gods, when we were at Galdin, he shook my hand! Ardyn's been putting him in armor and making him, I don't know, making him his, his _bodyguard,_ and we _left_ him."

"I'm not--" Noct started.

"I don't _leave_ my _family!_ " Iris cried. Ignis' breath hissed slightly, and Prompto winced. "You'd think you'd understand th--"

"I'm not losing you," Noct said. Iris sank back into her seat. "I've lost too many of the people I love already, Iris."

"Yeah? So did Dad!" Iris was aware of the car slowing, the crackle of a radio going silent. "What are you gonna do, Noct? Lock me up? You'll have to, because I'm not letting Gladio be used by one of the people who are responsible for our dads--"

"Iris," Ignis said.

"And what about Ignis? Is he gonna take cover when the fighting starts? Or Prompto? What's gonna happen when you meet Luna, do you think? Will we have to hide her in a bunker or something because _you_ can't handle it if--"

"You think I want this?" Noct asked. His own voice was rising, now. "You think I didn't mourn Gladio? You think I don't know what it's like to want someone back so bad you'd give your own life for them? I'm not about to watch you die while I drive off to safety, Iris!"

"That's what I'm for!" Iris shouted.

"New rule, then!" Noct shouted back. "If I tell you to retreat, you retreat. If I tell you to back off, you _back off._ " Iris opened her mouth. "Am I your king, or aren't I?"

Iris sat there a minute, breathing hard, hands braced behind her.

"We'll get him back," Noct said. "I promise. But we're doing it together."

Iris wrenched open the car door. The desert rippled before her, heat twisting the air, and Iris strode out into it.

"Where are you going?" Noct shouted. "There's nothing out there!"

"Perfect!" Iris' voice was already shaking. "Nothing'll hurt me, then! Maybe I should live there!"

They followed her, of course. Iris could feel their presence behind her, hear the whispered, frantic conversations, and as she stalked across the hard-packed earth, her anger drained away into a deep, overwhelming embarrassment. She wasn't supposed to break down. She was an Amicitia, a Shield, someone who had to keep their cool when their kings couldn't keep theirs. Some of the things she'd said--She shouldn't have brought up Luna. That was a cruel tactic, using the woman Noct loved to prove a point. She'd have to swallow her pride and apologize...

As she walked, the root of her disquiet crept over her thoughts, digging into the quiet spaces left by the scuff of her boots in the dust. Gladio hasn't recognized her. He'd taken her hand, he'd fought her, spoken to her, and he hadn't remembered her. 

Her didn't know his own name.

Iris stopped, dragging at her hair, and pulled out her phone. She pressed the button without thinking, and the phone was already at her ear before she could turn it off.

"You've reached the cell of Clarus Amicitia. If this is Citadel business, please call my extension at--"

Iris dropped her phone.

Noct picked it up.

Iris turned, but she couldn't quite meet him in the eyes. She looked over his shoulder instead, gazing out at an outcropping of rock shaped in a half circle. "I shouldn't have said all that," she said. "About your dad, or. Or any of it. I'm sorry. I guess I..." She shrugged. "I guess I'm not the best at this Shield thing, huh?"

Noct handed her the phone. "No one's expecting you to be perfect right now, Iris. We get it."

"He didn't remember me," Iris said. 

"I know." Noct kept his hand held out, palm up. Iris took it. "I meant what I said. We'll get him back. All of him. And you'll live to see it happen."

Iris looked up at him. Noct wasn't the elegant, unworldly figure he'd been at the barricade earlier, flushed with victory and framed in the light of the sun. His hair was a mess of dirt and clumped gel. His cheeks were streaked with sand. There were bags under his eyes, his lips were chapped raw, and he held Iris' hand so tight her joints creaked.

"I'm sorry I said that about Luna," Iris said. "I know you love her. You love everyone. And it's, it's hard."

Noct dragged at his lower lip with his teeth. "It's not.. Not like that, Iris."

"It's fine," Iris said. "I know this thing with Gladio's taking over, but we need to find her first. We shouldn't lose sight of what's important."

" _You're_ important," Noct said. Iris smiled. 

"Not as important as Luna." 

Noct lowered his brows, lips parted, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of an imperial airship. They turned as MTs spilled out of the ship, and Noct released Iris' hand to summon his sword with a frustrated rumble in his throat. Iris sighed and summoned her gloves, tugging them on as they advanced on the MTs together, side by side.

 

\---

 

Theseus sat next to Ardyn on the small fold-out bed of the chocobo post caravan, head in his hands.

"Try not to look so glum," Ardyn said, as he stitched a patch in his coat. The bullets had ripped through him, but all they'd done was add to the scars on Ardyn's chest and shoulder, small marks against the wide, raised lumps of tissue all along his back and sides. There were even marks on his hands, front and back, though Theo hadn't built up the courage to ask why. 

"They kept calling me Gladio," Theo said.

"Perhaps you have a twin," Ardyn said. "Or perhaps that's what the Lucian army called you when they took you. Do you remember?"

Theo examined his hands. There'd been blood there, once. His own, or maybe the girl's, under his nails. "Iris. The girl. She was crying."

"Yes, well, I'm sure that tactic works for some," Ardyn said. 

"Don't think it was a tactic," said Theo. 

"Regardless, she'll have to be dealt with," Ardyn said. He frowned at his handiwork and flipped it inside out. "You'll have to kill her first if you want to get to the king."

Theo thought of Iris lying at his feet, her face twisted in fury and... Something else. Loss. It felt like loss, like the emptiness growing in Thro's gut, like something had broken in her. 

He wondered what she'd seen in him.

"Theo?" Ardyn said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," Theo said. "I do. Next time, the girl dies."

 

\---

 

One of the best things about Hammerhead was that it was, in a small way, like a self-contained piece of Insomnia. There were always people milling around, even late into the night, and when Iris jerked awake out of an indistinct nightmare, sweating and shivering, she stepped out of the caravan to the sound of a small radio playing by the corner store. She pulled up a plastic chair and watched Hunters mingle by the diner, comparing the bounties taped to the window.

"Hey, girl." Iris jumped and glanced up--Cindy Aurum waved from the upstairs window over the garage. She had on a bright pink nightgown, oddly old-fashioned and heavy with ruffles, and Iris smiled and waved back. "Bad night?"

"Bad everything," Iris said, but the joke fell flat, trailing off into a mumble. Cindy raised her eyebrows and draped herself over the window.

"Want me to bring down a beer?" she called. Iris shrugged. "Wine? I got a box."

She disappeared from view and reappeared a minute later, holding a box of pink wine and two glasses. She plonked them down on the plastic table, and Iris popped the tab on the wine, lifting it to pour a glass.

"Saw y'all come in earlier," Cindy said. She hitched her nightgown to her knees and sat. "Looked like a bunch of kicked puppies. Somethin' go down?"

"Yeah." Iris passed the box to Cindy and took a sip. It wasn't that bad, really, but Iris didn't have much experience for comparison. "Honestly, I'm not sure if we need to lay low for a while or start blowing up imperial bases, the way things are going."

"There's always both," Cindy said. "Or you can go undercover, though with a car like yours, that's pretty hard to do." She propped her feet up on Iris' legs, and Iris looked up, startled, glass held to her lips. "What?"

"I think," Iris said, and drained the last of her glass, "I might have a job for you."

Thirty minutes later, Noct woke to Iris lightly slapping him in the face.

"Noct," she whispered. "Noct. _Noct._ "

Noct blinked slowly, with the quiet misery of a night owl forced to wake before noon. "Wh--Iris? Are you--"

"Shhhh," Iris said. Her eyes were wide in the dark of the caravan, pupils blown and slightly unfocused. "You trust me, right?"

"Uh."

"Say yes," Iris said.

"Yes? Iris, are you dr--"

"Shh," Iris whispered again, pressing her hands to his mouth. "Go back to sleep, you beautiful dork."

"Whffmgh?" Noct said, into Iris' palm. Then she was gone, disappearing in a vision of black pajamas and slippers, into the night.

 

For a paint job done in the dark by two inebriated women with several boxes of wine, Iris had to admit that it wasn't that bad.

"What have you done," Noct said, in a dull, leaden tone. He lay a hand on the white and yellow racing stripes on the side of the car, which ended with a grinning cartoon chocobo decal. Iris slowly sipped from a massive bottle of water and shrugged. Even shrugging hurt.

"We're incognito," she said. Cindy frowned at a fleck of paint on the grille, and whipped out a rag. "We need to go to Insomnia--"

"Lestallum?" Prompto suggested.

"Right. But we can't go as us. So here we are. I found you clothes at the gift shop." Ignis lifted a flower-print shirt with the slow dread usually reserved for extricating daemons in the bathtub. "That one's yours," Iris said. She flipped down the shuttered lenses of her new sunglasses, hitched up the hood of her "Welcome to Galdin!" commemorative sweater, and climbed into the backseat. "Now I'm going to lie here, where I live now, and die."

"Aw, hon," Cindy said. Iris covered her face with an arm.

In the end, the sight of Iris whimpering in pain in the back of the car overrode any of her friends' concerns regarding their new clothes, and they changed in silence in the caravan. Ignis patted Iris on the head as he passed to take the driver's seat, and Iris moaned faintly.

"This is what happens when you drink with Cindy," Prompto whispered. Iris wrenched off her flip flop and threw it in his direction--Prompto yelped, and Noct snorted.

"There it goes," he said, from over her head. "Right down the hill."

She was feeling marginally better by the time they made it to Lestallum, but she couldn't summon her shoes without retching, and had to hobble on Prompto's arm so they could grab her spare boots from the trunk. Prompto stayed with her as they lurched through Lestallum, and all Iris saw through her shades was a glimpse of high buildings, steam from food trucks, and seagulls wheeling in the high distance.

The dim lights of the Leville were a blessing, but Iris kept her glasses on as Talcott barreled down the stairs, crashing into her with a yelp that echoed off the pillars. 

"Hey," Iris said, hugging him back despite the hammering in her skull. "Good to see you made it."

"We were so worried," Talcott said. "We thought you guys had gone back. Grandpa's upstairs, but he can't go down 'cause of his knees. Oh!" He jumped back from Iris and bowed to Noct. "Your h--majesty. Hi."

Noct grinned and crouched down to give Talcott a fistbump. 

Jared received them upstairs with a smile and a mountain of store-bought cookies, which Talcott tore into while Iris hugged Jared tight enough to make him wince. Jared removed her sunglasses, gave her a long, amused look, and summoned her into the kitchen for what had to be the worst drink Iris had choked down in her life.

She would never, she thought, as she washed the taste out with an inch of toothpaste and hope, ever drink with Cindy again. 

Iris emerged into the living room feeling halfway human again, only to find Noct and Prompto huddled together over something pale and silvery, which pooled in Noct's hands. "Something up?" she asked, and Noct jumped. "What are you doing with a wig, Noct?"

"It's, uh." Noct glanced at Prompto, who kicked him in the shin. "A wig."

"Yeah. I can see that."

"Well." Noct looked at Prompto again. Prompto's face was caught in a tight grimace of pained affability. "We thought. I thought that you might want to be incognito for a while."

Ignis turned to the window, covering his eyes with one hand.

"Right," Iris said.

"It's been a rough couple of days," Prompto said, as Noct flushed red to the roots. "You should see Lestallum. Check out the sights."

"Well, I guess we'll need to," Iris said. "In case you know who follows us."

"Good," Noct said, and pushed the wig in her direction. "We'll go together."

The wig didn't really fit her--It was one of Noct's old ones, from a cosplay gone way too far--but it was nice to step out into the open, taking in the fading light of the sunset beyond the high rises. Iris adjusted her mauve and black dress, closed her eyes, and nearly tripped when Noct took her arm without warning.

"Thought we'd check out the market," he said. "Talcott says there's a craft tent there."

Iris grinned. "Aw, Noct, you do know how to show a girl a good time. Luna's one lucky woman." She slid her arm out from under Noct's and hopped down the steps. Behind her, Noct made a slight, disgruntled sound and raced to follow her.

"You know it was arranged, right?" Noct said, taking her arm again. Iris gave him a curious look. "I mean. Maybe we're just friends."

"Of course we are," Iris said.

"I mean maybe Luna and I are," Noct said, a little desperately. Iris raised her brows, momentarily thrown, and let her arms drop.

"Oh."

"So." Noct gestured towards her, then sighed and shook out his hair. "The market's this way."

Iris walked in a daze next to Noct as he spoke, in the awkward, stilted way that was his form of babbling nervously, about Lestallum. He'd clearly done his research. It was rumored to be one of the oldest towns in Duscae. The women were almost all engineers and scientists, the lookout was famous the region over, the little flags on every market stall were signs for the gods... 

Iris stared at the back of his neck, trying to remember how to breathe.

 _Oh,_ said her brain, in the silence normally filled with strategy and tactics and the occasional fruitless daydream. _Oh._

"There's a dance going on by the lookout right now," Noct said, breaking into her thoughts with a hand on her arm. She shook off the haze with a toss of her silvery wig, which slipped slightly down her forehead. Noct gently righted it again, and Iris bit her cheek.

"You hate dancing in public," she said.

"Yeah, but you love it," he said. "And we're in disguise, right?"

Except they weren't, not really. Noct was in a fine, tailored suit and smart dress shoes, and his hair was combed down in a way that made him look like he'd stepped out of a catalogue. Iris tucked a stray lock of hair under the wig and swallowed thickly.

"Okay," she said, in a small voice.

When they walked down the steps to the lookout, Noct took Iris' hand. She smiled, wary at first, then brighter, broader, overwhelmed by the simple warmth of his hand and the way he kept glancing back at her, uncertain and hopeful. She squeezed his hand and stumbled down the last few steps in her hurry to reach the lookout. There was a band playing by a ring of food stands, mostly strumming banjos and mandolins, with someone on the ground tapping a large metal bowl flipped upside down. Noct took Iris' other hand, and spun her into the crowd. The wig slipped loose, and Iris wrenched it off, letting it drop on the arm of a bench.

In the shadows ringing the crowd, a dark shape formed against the blood-red sky.

"Noct," Iris said. Noct spun her under his arm, and she pulled herself closer, matching Noct's steps perfectly. "Call me delusional, but I think you might be trying to tell me something."

"Wondered when you'd get the hint," Noct said, and smirked at Iris' suspicious look. "You're always talking about Luna these days, Iris. It's been obvious for weeks."

Iris was only somewhat aware of the fact that they'd stopped dancing, standing still in the middle of the crowd. She lay a hand on Noct's chest, and he didn't pull away.

"It's probably not a good idea," she said.

"Says who?" Noct asked, and, before Iris could come up with a hundred names to prove it, tilted her chin up with his knuckles and kissed her.

And for a moment, there was quiet. The world breathed in, setting aside the war, the grief, the man standing in the woods with her brother's face, the looming shadow of Noct's destiny as king. And Iris was, just for a second, with Noct's hand stroking her jaw and his lips on hers, _happy._

The world breathed out. Iris pulled away, mouth open, and got one look at Noct's pleased, somewhat sheepish grin, before a hand grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to his knees.


	7. Chapter 7

Noctis knew, as his knees struck the concrete and Iris drew herself up, squaring her shoulders, that Gladio never stood a chance.

Iris Amicitia wasn't always an elegant fighter. There was no elegance in the hard smack of a fist in Gladio's jaw, the grunt of pain as her knee jabbed his gut, or the sharp, economical way she moved. There was no grace to the muscles that bunched as she kicked and clawed and broke fingers with a crack that sent howls of pain through the echoing screams of the crowd.

But there was beauty there, all the same. It was the raw beauty of a fire, of an explosion, of the roar of an engine and the whistle of the wind. Iris fought with reckless, vicious brutality, and as MTs dropped from airships on every block and Noctis found himself facing down a line of humanoid soldiers, Iris struck her brother in the eye and sent him staggering against the wall of the lookout.

The sound she made as Gladio fell was one that Noctis would remember for the rest of his life.

Iris reached for Gladio with bleeding, battered hands, and Gladio reached back, dragging her over the edge and into the dark beyond.

 

\---

 

Gladio had been trained for many things in his life, but it seemed, as Iris tumbled and clawed her way down the cliff-face, no one had ever taught him how to fall. He hit the first outcropping with a sickening thud, a bone cracked a few feet down, and by the time Iris slithered the rest of the way to the grass, Gladio was on his back, wheezing softly, eyes glassy with pain.

"Gladdy," Iris said. Her hands were scraped bloody on the stone, and when she dropped to her knees next to him, she left smears of red along his arm. He rolled his eyes at her, and she could feel the clammy chill of terror on his skin. "Gladdy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you fall."

Gladio's breath bubbled. Iris summoned a phoenix down--an emergency, last ditch heal-all, which burned like hell when active--and brushed back Gladio's damp hair.

"Stay still," she said, and braced herself over him as the feather burst into flame. Gladio groaned as the light of the fire raced over him, muscles locking together, weeks of healing tearing through his body in one torturous instant. Iris kept shakily stroking his forehead as he rode through it, and when the light of the down finally left him, Gladio just stared at her, blinking fast. 

"Mom?" he whispered.

Iris froze. Far above, she could hear the clash of swords, gunfire, the hoarse shout of someone calling her name. 

"It's Iris," she said. "Gladio, it's--"

Gladio started to shake. He knocked her hand away and staggered to his feet, watching her as though she were a daemon on the edge of a haven, drawing closer. "Happening again," he said.

"Gladio." Iris stood, and Gladio stumbled back. "I can help. _We_ can help. Me and Noct and Ignis, and Jared, Jared's still with us. Talcott's ten now--you don't know Prompto, but--"

Gladio looked, if anything, worse still. His face was ashen, and his hands kept clenching, grasping at nothing. Up on the lookout, Noct's calls were getting frantic, verging on panic.

"Gladio, please." Iris rocked back on her heels as Noct cried out in pain. "Come with me. I'll help you."

Gladio shook his head and backed up another step. Iris lunged to take his hand, but Gladio was already running, taking off into the trees with all the strength the down had given him, while Noct let out another cry up on the lookout. Iris hesitated, her legs screaming in pain as she bobbed from foot to foot, then raced in the other direction, towards the steps leading up to Lestallum. Towards Noct.

She found him backed to the wall of a gas station, cornered by assassin-type MTs. Prompto and Ignis were wading through the soldiers at the top of the stairs leading to the city proper, so it was Iris who had to brace herself, bleeding and aching and dizzy from a fall that had nearly killed her brother, facing down the MTs while Gladio ran out of reach.

When the last MT fell, Iris wobbled on her feet, gingerly leaning on the wall. Her body felt like one massive bruise, and her head swam, the sound of Noct's voice warping and twisting around her. There was a crack of an elixir, the sting of muscles healing, and the dizziness faded to a dull roaring in her ears, but still Iris stood there, watching the others with a dazed, distant air, their words drifting over her.

Noct's arm slung over her shoulder, and Iris sank into the touch, the tension of the last hour draining out of her.

"Some first date, huh?" She said, and Noct groaned. He kissed her forehead, right there in front of everyone, and Iris wrapped an arm around his waist as they dragged themselves back to the Leville.

 

\---

 

Below, in the dark, the man who thought his name was Theseus walked into Ardyn's arms.

"Can't do it again," he said, standing in the glow of the airship parked in the grass of Duscae. His voice was lost in the roar of the engine, and he raised a shaking hand to Ardyn. "Don't make me face one of them again, Ardyn."

"Oh, but you were doing so well," Ardyn said. He wrapped Theo in a warm embrace, and Theo dropped to his knees, head bowed. The girl--he knew the girl, from before. From before the dark. The memory yawned before him, empty and terrible, scrawled over the face of Clarus Amicitia as he lay on the throne room floor in Insomnia, blood pooling under his official robes. Theo raised a hand to his face.

"Killed her dad," he whispered. "Shouldn't have... I shouldn't..."

"Shh." Ardyn ran a hand through his hair. Theo thought of Iris' face over his as the phoenix down burned through him, stroking his hair. She'd looked so like their mother, then, down to the narrow chin and the look in her eyes--

Everyone had always said that Iris and Gladio had the same eyes.

"Put me under," Theo said. He pressed his forehead to Ardyn's thigh. "Please."

"There, love," Ardyn said, holding Theo's cheek as he sank to one knee. "You know I have you."

"Please," Theo said, and it came out as a sob, low and terrible.

Ardyn sighed and raised his hand to Theo's eyes, and the world finally, finally slipped away.

 

\---

 

Monica and Dustin arrived in the morning, Dustin red-eyed and jittery with the adrenaline of scouting out an imperial base, while Monica drained a large coffee like it was the last elixir on earth. Iris hugged them carefully, not wanting to press any bruises, but Monica just wrapped an arm around her neck and dragged her into a sideways embrace.

"Ow," Iris whispered, as her neck, still sore from her fall the day before, flared alarmingly. Monica released her and looked her up and down.

"You've been around these boys too long," she said. "Let's catch up in my room, have a girl's day in."

Iris could only cast the others a pained, vaguely apologetic look as Monica marched her into her guest room, a firm hand clutching her wrist. When they disappeared from sight, Monica slammed the door shut with a foot and sighed.

"Alright," she said. "Out with it, Iris. Something has you rattled--Your hands are a mess, and you have twice as many scars than before."

Iris slipped her hands in her pockets, hiding the long, angry scratches on her palms. "You sure you're ready?" she asked. Monica nodded. "Gladio's alive."

The coffee cup slipped from Monica's fingers. She caught it again, but she fumbled to set it down on the bedside table, and she sank to a seat next to it. 

"Run that by me again," she said. 

It took a while. Midway through, when Iris got to the fall off the lookout, Monica reached for Iris and tugged her to the bed. She sat there, holding Iris' hand, tapping out a beat on her knuckles.

"He could have been brainwashed," she said, when Iris' voice died out into uncomfortable silence. "I suppose. It's an imperfect art--Any attempt to practice it was outlawed in Lucis a few hundred years back. It's easier to employ a spy than to make someone over from scratch." She dug through the bedside table, then came up with a notepad and a cheap pen. "So the times you've met him... What do you say would be his default behavior?"

"I don't know," Iris said. "Frustrated. Confused."

"But lucid?"

"Yeah," Iris said. She tapped her knees. "Except the beginning. Ardyn had to order him to shake my hand, and he was slow about it, like he was walking through water. His voice was weird, too."

Monica made a note. "Break it down for me. Did Ardyn do anything before he gave the order? What exactly did he say?"

"Something like, 'Theo, take the young lady's hand.' And..." Iris looked up at Monica. "He snapped his fingers."

"How many times?"

"Two? Three? I think three."

Monica tapped her pen on the notepad, nearly poking a hole through the pages. "It's happening again. You said that's one of the last things he told you? Then he's lapsed in the past. It _is_ imperfect. Iris, snap your fingers."

Iris snapped, and Monica kept jabbing at her notepad. "We should set a trap for him," Monica said. "Between Dustin and I, we might be able to find a way to ease him back without breaking him, but we'll need him in a safe location to do it. It might get ugly," she warned. "He may not _want_ to remember you."

"He doesn't," Iris said. "Not after the way he ran from me."

Monica stood, groaning as her back popped. "We'd best get started, then. Good thing you're better at setting traps than most of my subordinates," she said. "It's just a shame about your temper."

"My temper's fine!" Iris said. Monica gave her a long, meaningful look.

"Of course it is."

The first step to the plan, to Talcott's acute dismay, was for Dustin to drive Talcott and Jared to Cape Caem, jammed in the back of a truck with a bunch of farmers headed home from the market. When they were safely out of range, Ignis and Prompto started walking through Lestallum, furtively checking corners and alleyways, occasionally breaking into tense, short arguments that were just loud enough for an enterprising passer-by to overhear.

"It's your job to keep an eye on them!" Ignis cried, right in the middle of a crowded cafe. "If they've gone off to the caves on their own--"

"They wouldn't," Prompto said, and, in the spirit of bad actors everywhere, waited a full three beats before asking, "Would they?"

Meanwhile, Iris and Monica worked in the shade of a cave beneath Lestallum. Spray from the waterfall over the entrance slithered off their raincoats to make icy pools on the stone, but the delicate, nearly invisible crisscross of fishing wires and pulleys were almost complete, trailing to a slope that led to a patch of ice pebbled with cleverly concealed rope. Iris stood on one side, stuck in the darkness just on the edge of daemon territory, while Monica laid the finishing touches at the entrance.

"His majesty and I will be on the rocks over the fall," she said. "Signal us if you need help.

Iris saluted, then slowly lowered herself over the trap, one foot on the trigger that would spring the net. Outside, the waterfall thundered into the river below, making the cave echo with the beat of an unearthly drum.

She was starting to shiver by the time she heard the scrape of a boot on stone, and Iris let out a sharp cry, smacking her right foot on a patch of ice. The footsteps halted, and she heard the harsh intake of breath as whoever it was inched closer.

Iris cracked open her eyes. Gladio stood at the entrance, sword in hand, his face cast in shadow. He was looking her way, and his shoulders hunched forward as he raised his foot to the first fishing line trip-wire.

Iris hooked her own foot around the net and yanked. Gladio went down like a ton of bricks, tension cracking in the fishing line in swift pops that made him struggle to cover his ears, his eyes wild and wide. It was like a chorus of fingers snapping all at once, and Iris added her own to it as he was dragged off the ledge by her trap and sent tumbling into the heavier patch of ropes. They clung to him like glue, and he thrashed against them as he rolled to a stop at Iris' feet, with only one arm free, his sword a good three yards away.

Iris grabbed him by the collar. "I've got him!" she shouted. "Can you give me your name?" she asked Gladio, in a lower voice.

Gladio looked up at her with unfocused eyes. "His Majesty calls me Theseus," he said. His voice was toneless and soft. 

"What were you called before?" Iris asked. Noct and Monica raced in through the waterfall, dropping down from the ledge, and there was another series of soft popping sounds, closer now, like ice cracking in a class.

"In a cave," Gladio said. His gaze drifted in and out of focus, and terror flickered in his eyes. "Brought me back. They brought me back."

"What?" Iris yelped as Gladio started to struggle again. "Woah, hold on--"

Gladio looked up at Iris, and for a second, Iris almost saw recognition there. "No. No, no."

Beneath them, the ground shuddered. Iris wrapped her hand around the net as the ice cracked under her feet, but Gladio was too heavy to haul forward, and he was starting to struggle again, heaving himself about in the net. The crack widened, and Iris saw Noct reach for his sword, preparing to warp. Then the ground buckled again, and for the second time in as many days, Iris found herself plummeting into the darkness. An arm wrapped around her, and she got a glimpse of amber eyes in the strobing light of her clip-on flashlight, then pain flared at her neck, and all she knew was the dizzying weightlessness of the dark.

 

\---

 

Theo slowly unbent himself from around the young woman in his arms.

He had orders. They echoed in the back of his mind, struggling through the vast ocean of nothingness sloshing about in his skull, empty words without meaning. _Deal with the girl. Find the king._ Well, the girl was there, limp and bleeding in his arms. The king was somewhere above, lost. Theo looked about at the glistening stone of the cave, shuddered, and held the girl closer to his chest.

Deal with her. They were in a cave. He knew, in a distant sort of way, that he wasn't at home with caves. Something about them made the tide pull in his mind, set his nerves to singing. Caves were... evil. And he had to deal with the girl.

 _It's your job to protect her._ He couldn't remember who'd told him that. Not Ardyn. Someone else, someone from before. And the first orders were always the most important, weren't they? They were law.

Besides, the woman in Theo's arms was so... She was... She was like rain pouring into the emptiness, like a patch in a broken cup, something real. Something good, possibly.

Theo's sword was bent and almost useless after their fall, but it was sharp enough, and it had made short work of his bindings. Theo gripped it in one hand, the girl in the other, and angled the girl's light to peer into the dark of the cave. The light reflected off the liquid eyes of a daemon, which bared black teeth and skittered crablike along the wall. Theo hefted his broken sword and lay the girl on the ground, careful not to disturb the drying wound on her temple.

"Stay," he said. He wasn't supposed to speak on a mission, but the nothingness surged against the walls of his mind, and he wasn't sure what was and wasn't allowed anymore. Not there. Not in the dark.

Somewhere in the cave, he thought, as he raised his sword to the creature that lurched and hissed in the weak light, there was a wall. A wall of names. He would bring the girl there, maybe, and she could translate for him, and they would find a way out of the nothingness, into a place where he didn't have to keep coming back here, back to the empty, back to the wall, back to the shadow of a face on a marble floor, the taste of copper in his mouth.

He swung his sword, then he swung it again, and again, cleaving through bone and sinew, dully noting the way the daemon's eyes disappeared in the misshapen lump of its broken skull. Then he pushed it aside, shook the worst of the blood off his sword, and turned back to retrieve the girl.


	8. Chapter 8

The last time someone held Iris in their arms, Iris had been fifteen. She'd just stepped out of her bedroom, dressed in a dark red and black dress for her not-so-official coming-out party, and her dad had swept her up and marched her out into the hall, bellowing, "An imposter in the Citadel!" He'd nearly caused a security shutdown, and Iris, despite being somewhat mortified, had laughed so hard she cried tracks in her makeup. 

Now, her feet jostled against Gladio's side as he lowered her onto a patch of soft grass, growing in the light of a distant crack in the ceiling. Iris moaned and touched her temple, and a large hand brushed hers away.

Iris forced her eyes open. Gladio was kneeling next to her, his face shining with sweat, a battered sword at his side. The cave around them glittered with ice, and her breath formed puffs of steam that drifted in the long stalks of grass. 

"You carried me," she said. Gladio's expression was still vague, and he blinked at her like a puppet, slow and mechanical. "Gladio."

He stared at her, silent, watchful, streaks of blood on his arms. Iris sat up on an elbow. "Are you all there?"

"I don't understand the question," Gladio said. So that was probably a no.

"Do you know who I am?" She asked.

Gladio was silent for a minute. He was still panting softly, and his gaze kept darting beyond their small circle of light, into the cave. Iris sat up a little straighter, wincing as her head throbbed, and his attention snapped to her instead, with something almost verging on concern.

"How long was I out?" she asked. Gladio blinked again.

"Thought you wouldn't wake up," he said at last.

"Why?" Silence. Iris carefully lay a hand on his fist, and found Gladio was shaking slightly, a tremor in his fingers. "How do I bring you out of this? What does Ardyn do to bring you back?"

Gladio's fingers shifted, just slightly, and Iris caught the way his middle finger and thumb slid clumsily together. She held up a hand and snapped her fingers three times.

Gladio groaned and doubled over, clutching his hands to his face. His shoulders tensed, no longer slumped and hunched, and his eyes, when Iris could see them, were bright and clear with terror. He looked up at the stalactites gleaming on the ceiling and rolled his eyes. 

"Gods, of course you picked a fucking cave," he muttered. He sat on his ankles, made a face at the blood on his arms, and dug for a napkin in his pocket to wipe it off. 

"Something wrong with caves?" she asked. She couldn't remember Gladio being afraid of them before, but then, the closest Insomnia had to a cave were the crypts. 

"Yeah, you'd fucking think so," Gladio said, still scraping off dried blood. "It's where Lucis kept me for half my life, when they weren't strapping me to a fucking table."

Iris drew a potion from the armiger, which eased the throbbing in her head a little, and summoned her gloves for good measure. "That wasn't us," she said. "If Lucis had you, we would have brought you home." She stood, and when her flashlight roved over the cavern beyond, it slid over the oily skin of a spider daemon.

Gladio grunted and got to his feet. "See?" he said. "Caves."

"Maybe she'll stay where she is," Iris whispered.

"Nah, she's got our scent." Gladio frowned at his ruined sword, then picked it up, holding it more like a blunt instrument than a blade. "Stay back. You're injured."

"My weapon isn't broken, though," Iris said, and stepped in front of Gladio. The spider daemon rolled forward, bulbous body rocking on spindly, furry legs, and the human half of her opened a mouth that dripped with black slime. "I'll get her neck if you take out her legs."

"Works for me," Gladio said.

The worst thing about spider daemons wasn't their sharp teeth or nightmare-inducing habit of climbing up the ceiling--practically, it was the toxin in their saliva. Iris' entire left arm went fizzy and numb the moment she touched a rope of the stuff on her way up the daemon's back, and the creature's head was coated in it. She nearly fell off when Gladio broke three of the daemon's legs, but she hung on, twisting their neck with hands that burned and stung. She rolled off the creature as they thrashed in shuddering death throes, and Gladio caught her, keeping her on her feet.

"Nice one," he said.

"Thanks."

Gladio kicked at a patch of ice, which broke off to slither to the floor, and stamped towards the light to gather fistfuls of grass. He held it all like a bouquet in one hand, and dug in his pocket with the other. Iris jumped as he threw her a cardboard box of matches.

"To wash off the toxin," he said, gesturing at the ice. Iris struck a match, and Gladio held the grass to it, grinning as the stalks curled and smoldered and burst into flame. After a minute of careful maneuvering, they had just enough water to wash the worst off Iris' hands.

"You don't know a way out, do you?" Gladio asked, as they edged away from the daemon. Iris shrugged, and his lips twitched. 

"Noct and the others will come up with something," Iris said. "And I'm pretty handy in difficult situations. I was kind of trained for this sort of thing." She pushed them away from a fork in the cave--nothing but stagnant air in that direction--and started to inch up a slope. 

"Which is weird enough," Gladio said. "I've looked you up, you know. Iris Am--Iris, debutante. Party girl. Rumored to be dating the prince--which... Should he be kissing you? How old are you, twelve?"

"Ha, ha. Eighteen, and I'm not talking about me and Noct right now." 

"Doesn't seem right," Gladio muttered. "He's engaged, and now he thinks he's got a right to string you along?"

"Wow, that almost sounded like a dumbass older brother," Iris said, and Gladio scowled. "Niflheim forced the marriage thing. He likes me. I mean. He took me on a date and everything."

"Shoulda got you flowers," Gladio said. He slipped on a patch of ice and scrabbled at the wall. Iris caught his hand, and they slowly eased themselves up together. "Those pink ones you like."

Iris kept a tight grip on his hand. "How'd you know what kind of flowers I like?" she asked.

There was a long, breathless silence. "Must've read it somewhere."

Iris lowered her voice. "Mom used to keep a garden out back," she said. "There were gladioluses she planted when you were born, then irises, and a whole patch of other flowers for all the names that didn't work out. We used to sit on the grass when your tutors went home, and you taught me how to split a blade of grass and whistle through it..."

"I'm not..." Gladio's hand tightened around hers. "I know what you want me to be, but..."

"Can you guess what some of the flowers were called?" Iris asked. "Just guess, okay. Other than irises and gladiolus. What else was there?"

"Gods, I don't know."

"Guess."

Gladio made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. "Dahlias," he said. "There. We're done."

Iris held still, her arm jerking as Gladio tried to move forward. "Dahlia was our mother's name," she said. 

Gladio's grip on her hand went slack. When he turned to face her, he looked stricken, so like his father that Iris had to hold down a lump of misery rising in her throat.

"What do you mean, _was?_ " 

 

\---

 

There was no one to put Theo under again.

His footsteps creaked, his blade dragged lines through the ice, and his little sister was powerful and clear-eyed and far too kind for someone with only a shadow of a brother left to hold onto. If the loss of her family had changed her, it was in the way glass was shaped in a forge, or a sword, bright and strong and beautiful. She'd never had the luxury of looking away from grief, of disappearing into the nothingness. In the ruins of their family, Iris had been left to sift through the ashes until she found the embers glowing far below. Theo--Gladio had turned from them, and let them die.

Words on the wall. Iris. Clarus. Dahlia. 

A body at Gladio's feet. The roar of a wave in his head. Blood on his armor.

He closed his eyes. The words remained.

"We'll talk about it when we get out," Iris said. "I don't think this is the best place for it."

It probably wasn't. The cave would have been beautiful to anyone else--the light that fell from the far end of the cavern made diamonds of the ice, rainbow patterns that shifted under their feet as Iris led them up slopes and along narrow pathways. It had none of the dull taste of Angelgard, the scent of the sea and old blood and piss and fear--Gladio had learned early that fear had a scent, too, that he stank of it for weeks after Ardyn had lead him out, screaming through his ineffective blindfold as the sun made quick work of him. He probably stank of it now.

Iris squeezed his hand, and Theo remembered Ardyn's orders. He had to deal with her. Just as he'd dealt with Clarus. Just as he'd dealt, unknowingly, with his mother, putting her at risk just because the empire wanted him..

The sun was waiting for them, a patch of light stretched over the mouth of the cave like a screen. Figures ran for them, silhouettes taking form into the man who would have been Gladio's king, into Ignis, a woman Gladio should have known, a man he certainly didn't, gathering around them.

Noctis reached them first. He lay a hand on Iris' shoulder, a silent gesture of approval, and turned his gaze to Gladio.

Gladio remembered, as though in a dream, taking King Regis by the throat.

He dropped to his knees.

 

\---

 

In the end, they had to bring Gladio to Caem.

It was the most heavily-guarded safe house they knew of, with enough Hunters nearby to call on for backup if the Empire even darkened the horizon. This meant that Talcott and Jared had to be relocated to a farm nearby, quietly and under cover of dusk, and they had to smuggle Gladio in when the coast was clear of curious Hunters and tourists. 

Gladio was alarmingly quiet for much of the ride. He didn't ask about their mother again, only looked numbly out the window and occasionally glanced Iris' way when she touched him on the arm or the hand.

"This is nice," he said, when they opened the door to the lighthouse-keeper's place on Cape Caem. He had their father's broad shoulders, Iris realized, almost too big for the door, but he walked like a dazed child, aimless and wandering. 

"Gladio." Dustin looked up from a stack of notes on the kitchen counter and scrambled to his feet. He held out a hand. "You probably don't remember me. Dustin. Among other things, it's my job to provide assistance to soldiers transitioning from the front. I thought you might want to talk when you were done settling in."

Gladio gave him a blank look and nodded slightly. He looked back at Iris, who was standing with her head on Noct's shoulder, leaning into the feel of his hand on her waist, and frowned.

"Oh my gods," Iris whispered under her breath. She pulled away and wove an arm under Gladio's. "You're gonna have to get used to it," she said.

"Did your dad--" Gladio's face darkened briefly. "Approve?"

"Sure. He actually wanted us betrothed a while back," Iris said. Gladio made a slight choking sound. "What? I'm an adult. I'm allowed to date."

She towed Gladio into his rooms--which were fitted with traps that only Monica could probably disarm--and sat down on the old, slightly musty bed. "Sit," she said. "We're having quality time."

Gladio eyed her warily and sat on the edge of the bed, hands on his knees. "That works," she said. She grabbed a brush from the bedside table and knelt at Gladio's back. "We need to do something with that hair."

"You know you can't just--" Gladio made a soft sound at the first swipe of the brush through his hair. Iris held the back of his neck as she teased out a tangle. It was a mirror of what they used to do when Iris was little--Iris sitting on Gladio's bed while he did her hair up in beads and wraps like their mother's, never mind that hers couldn't keep the shape. 

"You're thinking of running again," Iris said, searching for the natural part of Gladio's hair. His shoulders stiffened. "I don't know what Ardyn and Niflheim made you do, or told you about what you are, but whatever it is, it's bad enough that I can see you making plans in your head. You almost ran twice so far."

She parted his hair, teasing strands into a tight braid at the side of his temple. 

"You're being too forgiving," Gladio said, after a minute. "Too soft. A shield can't afford to be soft."

"No one said I'm a shield," Iris said. She summoned a pin to keep his braid in place. 

His voice, when it came, was almost fond. "Bullshit."

Iris smiled. "Okay, maybe," she said. "But I'm not the kind of shield you remember. Things changed."

"Could be they changed too much," Gladio said. "I'm only here because--I need to know what's real. So much is... I can't..."

Iris twisted his braid up, curling like a crown around his skull. "Walk me through it, then," she said. "What's the first thing you remember?"

"Hard to say," Gladio said. Iris waited, weaving the braid into a new one on his right side. "Not sure you'll want to hear."

"I do," Iris said. She wondered if he could feel her heart thumping from there. Fear was a cold lump in her stomach, holding her down as her fingers worked through Gladio's long brown hair. 

"Alright," Gladio said. "But don't say I didn't warn you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a mention of suicide in this chapter!

There's no night in the dark, only hours where the drumbeat of waves on the walls of the boy's prison rise to a thunderous roar, and he's trapped in the heart of a drowsing beast, wondering when the walls will break and the water will take him. 

He thinks of the sea, sometimes. Of drowning. Of falling into the depths where the sky is a blossom of rays shooting out like light from a stormcloud, and the shadows enfold him, bearing him down. There are times when the tide rises, and he thinks he can hear the whales singing. There's a magic in that, in the speech of whales, of birds, of dolphins clicking to each other across the distant sea. He presses his hands to the floor of the cave and listens, sending out his own silent prayer.

I'm here. I'm here.

He doesn't know who he's calling to. He's lost their faces, the way they speak, the sound of their footsteps on a carpeted stair in a home he can't remember. But he has their names. He digs the shape of them into the wall, tracing the shallow scratches he made at the start, when the fear was thick enough to choke him. So long as he can come back to the wall, he'll always know them. They are his own whale song. They're all he has left.

 

To say that Magitech is painful is as close to a lie as anyone can manage. It isn't the pain of a broken arm or splintered nails, which the boy knows, but a smaller, deeper pain, insidious and sly. It wriggles its way into the boy's brain with the slow horror that comes with finding a door in the hall that hasn't been there before, the unease of a stairway that goes deeper than the basement, carving a hole in the earth. 

When the boy was young, he found a bone in a garden. He doesn't know where this was or who the dark shape above him belonged to, but he remembers reaching into the soft earth and pulling out the yellowed fragments of a skull.

A rat, it's bones long picked clean, empty sockets gazing up at him--The boy thinks of this when the doctors strap him to his chair, when the lights go on and the magitech meter flickers to life, the glass that holds it snapping like a fuse going out. The pain comes. The boy holds the skull. The skull opens its mouth wide, and the boy falls into it, tumbling into the pit in the earth where the soul of the rat lies waiting, trapped by the roots of gladiolus, of iris and dahlia.

 

Ardyn has to hold him over the water when he bathes for the first time. The water runs black. It empties, fills again. The water runs black. Bit by bit, the boy--but he isn't a boy, not anymore, too many birthdays have been lost to the dark--appears in patches through the dirt, piece by piece, until the water runs clear and there's nothing left but Theo.

 

There's a poem he used to recite to pass the time in the dark. Poems, songs, pieces of books from lost libraries. The poem is of a woman trapped in a tower, fated to die if she ever leaves. She does die in the end, of course, lying on her back in the sun, her boat drifting in the current. Theo doesn't understand why until he bites into an orange for the first time, standing on the rooftop apartments of Ardyn, his king. The fruit bursts on his tongue, and he gets it now, why someone would risk everything for this, for a chance at joy.

That night, he kisses Ardyn for the first time. 

 

He is made empty. The nothing swallows him. It's okay. He's okay. He turns from the wall of words that stands low and ugly in his dreams, and when he comes to, Ardyn is waiting for him. 

He loves Ardyn more than he loves himself, but that's not unusual. Theo is nothing without something to fill him. Just a vessel. He left himself behind in the dark years ago. Even now, the boy he was is sinking into the ocean, wrapped in the song of the whales. Ardyn knows. 

He's okay.

 

\---

 

Gladio sighed. Iris was waiting for him, hands in his hair, gazing expectantly through the mirror. He didn't know how long she'd been waiting for him to speak, how long he'd stayed silent, unable to piece together the past into anything like a coherent whole. 

"Maybe Ardyn didn't know," he said at last. Iris frowned. "Who I was. He wouldn't give me these kind of orders if he knew."

Iris said nothing, only slid next to him on the bed. Hers should have been a charmed life. Shield to the king, maybe even his partner if he deserved her, with a proper family to come back to. Gladio wrapped an arm around her shoulders and looked at his own face in the mirror. 

"You mentioned nothingness, before," Iris said. "Is that what happens when someone snaps their fingers?"

"It wasn't always that bad," Gladio said. "It got worse after Insomnia fell. Before, it was more like falling asleep."

"That's horrible," Iris said. "And Ardyn did that to you?"

"He didn't want to," Gladio said. "I just get... episodes, sometimes."

"You mean you remember."

Gladio pulled away to lie back on the bed, and Iris flopped down next to him. It was... familiar. They'd done this before. "Tell me about you," he said. "How you got here."

"Wow, talk about a long story," Iris said. She wriggled, resting her head on Gladio's arm. "Okay. Do you want me to start at the beginning, or with the road trip?"

"The beginning," Gladio said. "As far back as you can."

"Alright," Iris said. "Let auntie Iris tell you a story." Gladio rolled his eyes, and Iris raised her voice an octave, grinning. "Long, long ago--"

"No."

"In a land far away, there lived a princess--"

Gladio groaned, and Iris laughed. "You're trapped! No escape, Gladio. You get the rhinestone version now. Watch out--I might even throw in a unicorn for kicks."

 

When Noctis eased the door open some time later, when even the scent of roasting chicken from the kitchen did nothing to pull Iris or Gladio from the room, he found them both collapsed on the bed. Iris was sleeping with her mouth open, as usual, and Gladio snored like a behemoth, his arm trapped by Iris' shoulders. Noct stood there a moment, one hand on the doorframe, then backed away, closing the door behind him without a sound.

 

\---

 

In the moonlit yard of the lighthouse-keeper's home, Noctis waited. He sat between the high roots of an oak, legs crossed, holding a sword in his lap. It was a standard short-sword, one of the first weapons in his armiger, and the edge of the blade tended to go dull if someone even looked at it the wrong way. So he was rubbing it down, inspecting the gleam of the blade, when he heard the back window of Gladio's safe room open.

Of course he'd disarmed the traps. Noct remembered too many afternoons when he and Ignis, thinking they'd escaped the watchful eye of their minders, had been caught sneaking out by a well-meaning Gladio right when they thought they were home free. He had a twisty way of thinking, and Noct doubted even Niflheim could beat that out of him.

Gladio dropped to the grass, and Noct whistled softly. He spun, immediately sinking into a defensive crouch.

"Nice," Noct said, rubbing a speck of dirt off his sword. "Asshole."

"Don't--" Gladio rocked forward, then back, glancing over his shoulder. He slunk closer, his footsteps as light as Iris'. "I needed air."

"I mean, yeah," Noct said. "Opening a window usually works. But people draw the line at climbing out of it. What do you think you're doing to Iris?"

Gladio's fists clenched, then opened, slow and steady as a heartbeat. "Not doing anything to her," he said. "I'm protecting her."

"From what?" Noct stood, and took note of the way Gladio's gaze traveled down the length of his sword. "Heartbreak? 'Cause that's what's gonna happen if you leave."

"Ain't it enough?" Gladio lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "She knows I'm alive. She knows I'm safe. Ain't it enough to end it there? Let her keep thinkin' that?"

"She'll carry on if she has to, but she won't be the same," Noct said. He'd never been any good at sugar-coating the truth. Iris _could_ survive. It was one of the things he liked about her; Even when things went to hell, she picked herself up and slogged through the mess anyways. She was driven. Purposeful. And if someone burned that out of her, Noct would take them out himself. Even if they were Gladio.

"What were you gonna do?" Noct asked. "Go back to Ardyn?"

"Yes. No. I don't think he... He's not the one who hurt me," Gladio said. "But I wasn't going to..."

"What, then? Where were you going?" Noct took a step closer. He could see it in Gladio's eyes; An echo of a darkness that had crept in the back of Noct's mind since the ring started to drain the life from his father. The shadow that tugged at his thoughts when Noct saw his own face on a billboard and locked the door to his balcony. The look in his father's eyes when he and Clarus were drinking alone, heads down, surrounded by ghosts. "The cliffs aren't far, I guess."

Gladio went still. Shit. Noct lurched forward and took his arm, and Gladio stiffened under his touch. 

"What makes you think that's a good idea?" Noct hissed.

Gladio looked him up and down, slowly, lingering on his face. "You don't really look like him, do you?" Noct waited. Here it was. Whatever had kept Gladio so silent on the road, what made him break in Lestallum, in the caves, what stopped his tongue when he spoke to Iris, who said he barely talked at all. 

"I was there," Gladio said. "When Insomnia fell."

Noct's gut clenched. "You, or Theo?"

"Theo, I guess. I was under." Under. Iris had described how he acted in the cave, before she literally snapped him out of it. The idea of Ardyn putting Gladio in that state, where he could barely even put a complex thought together, had heat churning in Noct's stomach. "I killed your father. And Clarus."

Noct's hand clenched on Gladio's arm. Gladio looked away, breathing hard, and Noct saw the bright glitter of tears in his eyes, still unshed.

"Fuck him," Noct said, loud enough for his voice to echo off the walls of the old house. Gladio blinked, startled. A tear ran down the line of his scar. "He made you kill your own _father._ He didn't even give you a _choice._ I'm killing him. I'm gonna go out there and--"

"No." Gladio pulled away. "He didn't know."

"He's the chancellor of Niflheim!" Noct cried. A window flickered on in the house behind Gladio, and Noct saw a figure at the door. "You think he doesn't know what Gladiolus Amicitia looks like?"

Gladio glanced back at the door and cringed. "You have to let me go," he said. "If Iris learns about this--"

"Fuck," Noct whispered. He looked at Gladio's hands. The hands of the man who killed his father. 

"Let me go or put me under," Gladio said. 

"I'm not doing that to you," Noct said. "No one's gonna do that again, Gladio."

Gladio backed away, and the figure--Iris, beckoning to Prompto in the doorway--clattered down the steps. Gladio tried to sidestep her, but she grabbed him by the shoulders, and he had no choice but to catch her as she hauled herself up, wrapping her arms around his neck.

It took Noct a moment to realize that she was whispering, short and sharp and soft, into his ear. Her shoulders shook, and Gladio sank to his knees in the grass just as her own legs buckled. The others were up, circling them warily, and Noct swallowed the taste of bile in his throat. Gladio had killed his father. Gladio, who used to talk about King Regis like he was some kind of god come down to earth. Noct raised a hand to brace himself and staggered behind a tree, where he dropped to his hands and knees and heaved wetly in the weeds. He was so busy trying not to cough up his lungs that he didn't hear the roar of the engine over the wind that shook the oaks overhead.

By the time he heard the first scream, it was far too late.


	10. Chapter 10

There wasn't anything they could have done. When the bay doors of Ardyn's ship clanged open, and wires, infused with the violet light of magitech, dropped like a forest of snakes around Gladio and Iris, Gladio knew better than to fight. Iris tried, of course. She wrenched and flailed and spat curses at the wires that hooked into their clothes and sent needles of pain along their skin, and actually managed to rip two out of their sockets before she was borne up, dragged over the edge. Gladio heard the clatter of a blade being thrown too late, the hiss of severed wires at his feet, and then Ardyn was there, pulling him the rest of the way onto the ship.

"I thought I'd nearly lost you," Ardyn said. Gladio rolled away from him, kicking off wires. The bay doors were already starting to close, and they were ascending fast--He lunged for Iris, but Ardyn caught him by the arm, holding him still.

"Theo?" Ardyn's brows were knit with concern, but Gladio thought of what Noctis had said out in the yard. He thought of newspapers with names blacked-out and photos removed, of all the episodes Ardyn saw him through when he was younger, when even the thought of Lucis made the world tilt on its axis.

"Tell me you didn't know who I was," Gladio said. 

In the far end of the ship, Iris was on her knees, held down by a squad of MT soldiers. The bodies of those she'd taken down lay scattered on the floor, shaking and hissing their death throes into the roar of the engine.

Ardyn stroked Gladio's cheek, and he leaned into the touch. "Of course I know who you are," he said. "Theseus. My shield."

Gladio looked into the unfathomable depths of his cold, unfeeling eyes and knew it for a lie. 

"Gods," Gladio said. "You must hate me."

"Don't be a fool," Ardyn said. "You're the only good thing to come out of that wretched place."

Then he snapped his fingers.

And Gladio blinked, and the world hadn't changed. There was the empty rising on all sides, threatening to consume him, but he was still...aware. He knew who he was. He felt, with a pain that wrenched at him as though his insides were being scraped raw, the horrible truth of Ardyn's love for him, that anchor he'd clung to while his mind shattered and cracked and was cobbled back together again. And where the empty gave way, fear crept in, fear for Iris, for Noct, for those he'd left behind.

"Sit down," Ardyn said. Gladio sat, forcing his face into a calm, blank expression. He took slow, careful breaths, and held his hands in his lap to keep them from trembling. Behind him, Iris cursed.

"Charming," Ardyn said. There was none of the softness in his voice that Gladio knew so well, only a mocking sort of civility, laced with rage. "Is this the new shield of the king? They truly are scraping the bottom of the barrel these days, aren't they? Then again, I suppose it's my fault. I did have first pick."

Gladio twisted around slightly. Iris was being held back by MTs, but only just. She spat blood in Ardyn's face, and Ardyn sighed deeply, summoning a handkerchief. Iris froze. 

"Oh," Ardyn said, dabbing at his cheeks. "I take it this comes as a surprise. Honestly, you'd think the late King Regis would have said something. Never mind that. You'll have forgotten soon enough."

Iris glanced at Gladio, and her face fell. Gladio slowly lifted a finger to his lips--Iris' expression didn't change, but she did kick at the MT on her right, keeping Ardyn's attention locked on her. 

"The hell are you?" Iris asked.

"Strap her in," Ardyn said. "Set a course for Angelgard. The facility should still have enough power for this." He turned to Gladio and smiled fondly. "Who knows, Theo? Given enough time, you may find yourself a sister after all."

Gladio could feel the pulse of his heartbeat in his ears. Angelgard. Ardyn knew. Ardyn _knew,_ he hadn't rescued Gladio after all, he'd been in on it from the beginning, he--

He was going to torture Iris. _Break_ her, like he'd broken Gladio.

"There's a wave in my head," Gladio said, in what he hoped was a dull voice.

"What, again?" Ardyn knelt at Gladio's side. "Theo. Look at me." Gladio met his gaze. "You are Theseus. You were stolen from me by Lucis. You are my shield."

Gladio remained still, hands clenching in his lap. Ardyn sighed and snapped his fingers, and Gladio made a show of straightening his shoulders, glancing around. 

"Hold on," he said. "Thought I was... The Lucians... Found me behind a waterfall--"

"Yes, it was a close call," Ardyn said. He ran a hand through Gladio's hair, and Gladio suppressed a shiver. "But look on the bright side. We actually caught one of them this time."

Gladio looked at Iris, strapped to a chair, her eyes wild. "Huh."

"She could prove useful," Ardyn said. "Strange, though. She seems to suffer from, well... Episodes, I suppose. Remarkably like yours, in fact."

"You don't say." Gladio rose to his feet. "Think she's safe to approach?"

"I'd take care," Ardyn said. "She seems to be the type that bites."

Gladio forced a laugh. He walked towards Iris and knelt before her, placing a hand on hers. 

"Gladio," Iris whispered.

Gladio tugged at his ear. "Name's Theo. I've told you before."

Iris' gaze flicked to Ardyn's and back, then she tilted her head. Gladio nodded minutely--Ardyn had an uncanny ability to pick up whispers, even across a crowded room. "Where are you taking me?" She asked. "Angelgard? Isn't it just a rock?"

"It's a prison," Gladio said. "It's where the Lucians kept _me._ "

"We didn't keep you anywhere!" Iris snapped. Gladio looked over at Ardyn and rolled his eyes. Ardyn smiled and turned away. Iris made a gesture, and Gladio leaned forward.

"Please," Iris said. Light shimmered around her hand, and a phone dropped into it. Gladio took it from her, sliding it into his pocket, and stood.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "It's over, kid."

Iris made a frantic gesture, like someone holding down a button, and Gladio pulled the phone out just enough to press the home screen. 

"Gladio," she said. "Please. It's me, Iris."

The phone unlocked, and Gladio sighed loudly, skimming until he got to the contact labeled Noctis. He clicked it and slid the phone back in his pocket.

"Gods," he said. "That girl."

"Spirited, isn't she?" Ardyn asked. Gladio made himself walk towards him, and leaned against his shoulder. Ardyn smiled and idly stroked his hair.

"Why _are_ we going to Angelgard?" Gladio asked. He was too aware of the weight of the phone in his pocket. He shifted slightly, and Ardyn's hand lowered, gently rubbing his neck.

"I know you hate it, Theo," Ardyn said, and the softness in his tone made Gladio shiver. "But this time, I believe it may in fact be the key to our success."


End file.
